Living With It
by avocadomoon
Summary: "Right," Lindsay says, practically beaming as they shake hands for the second time. "We just have...people in common. That's all."
1. Chapter 1

The new girl at the office looks really fucking familiar, and Jess can't figure out why. He doesn't say anything, at first because he's afraid that he might have slept with her (he went through a serious one night stand phase after his second book was published), and letting on that he doesn't remember would be an amateur move, but then later on it becomes a sort of contest with himself to figure out where he's met her before. New York? Nah, her accent's not right. One of Matthew's exes? He doesn't even know her name, when Jess asks.

Chris does all the hiring, anyway. "She's amazing," he says. "Her name's Lindsay. I found her on LinkedIn, she's been doing all our Instagram stuff."

"We're paying someone to post on Instagram for us?" Jess asks.

"Yes, among other things," Chris continues, rolling his eyes. "She also books everyone's travel, and does the expense reports, and writes press releases, and yesterday she said she was interested in getting involved in the author tours, and you know how much of a migraine _that_ would give Matthew - "

"Thank God," Jess interrupts. Matthew has been intensely possessive of setting up the book tours for their authors for years, despite the fact that he absolutely sucks at it. There are several large bookstores in the tristate area that won't even take their calls anymore. "Would she be good at it?"

"She's been good at everything else I've given her," Chris says.

"What are we paying her?"

"Uh - "

"Pay her more," Jess interrupts. "Cut my salary if you have to. I'm gonna go talk to her."

"Please don't sleep with her," Chris pleads. "She's competent and she laughs at my jokes. I really don't want her to quit."

"She's not really my type," Jess says honestly, knocking on the wood of the door frame as he leaves. You know - just in case.

* * *

"I haven't really had a chance to introduce myself yet, which I realized this morning is kind of rude," Jess says, holding out his hand. Lindsay shakes it with a surprisingly firm grip, smiling at him widely. She's cute in a Sweet Valley High sort of way - blonde hair with untreated summer highlights, an uneven natural tan, big toothy smile. She wears floral suit jackets to the office a lot, he's noticed - cutesy pastel-colored business wear with little bows and fringes of lace. "I'm Jess."

"Lindsay," she says. "Don't worry - Matt already warned me you were rude. So I didn't take it personally."

Jess laughs despite himself. "Good."

"There's a lot of new people anyway," she continues. "Did you guys have a lot of people quit en masse a few months back or something?"

"Or something," Jess says. "We actually got a grant, believe it or not."

"Ah."

"So we used interns before, but now we can actually pay people, so." Jess waves his hands at the office at large. "It's like we're a real live business now."

"Exciting," Lindsay says, nodding and crossing her arms as she leans her weight against the side of her desk. Jess considers her, and decides that he likes her: she's got a wide open face, one of those faces people trust implicitly. There's dog hair on her jacket, and she's wearing very little makeup. Jess also catches a glimpse of a tattoo on her wrist where her sleeve has ridden up - some kind of flower. Of course. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to stare. It's just - have we met before?"

Relief makes Jess' shoulders loosen. "I've been thinking the same exact thing for weeks - yes, I'm _sure_ we have, I just can't remember."

"Yeah, me neither!" She shakes her head, squinting at him. "I didn't recognize your name, but...shit, this is gonna bug me."

"Sorry," Jess says with a laugh, "but it's been bugging me too. Hey Lindsay - do you drink?"

Lindsay blinks at him. "I'm unsure if I should answer that question."

Jess grins. "We have kind of an office thing most Fridays," he explains, "at the bar down the corner. It's not like a formal party thing, it's just that a few of us - at least - end up there most of the time. Would you like to join us?"

A slow smile spreads across her face. "My mom warned me about this, you know, when I moved to the big city," she says earnestly. "Male bosses inviting me out for 'a friendly office drink,' just wanting to get to know me one on one, in a _casual_ setting..."

"I'm not your boss," Jess says with a snort, "that's Chris, and he's extremely gay. If it makes you feel better, you can bring your boyfriend."

It's her turn to snort. "I don't have a boyfriend."

"Even better," Jess says, still squinting at her. He _knows_ he knows her. He's absolutely positive. He just can't remember how. "They bring down the vibe."

"I bet," Lindsay says dryly.

* * *

Jess wasn't lying about the office bar thing - it's become a tradition by now. Jess makes a point to stop by for at least one drink every week, mostly so the receptionists and interns - well, they used to be interns - don't get a chip on their shoulder about him. He knows how he comes off - holed up in his office (the only one with a door) all day. He doesn't want to turn into J. Jonah Jameson, stomping around the bullpen just to yell at people.

(While he does yell at people, he makes an effort to contain it to Chris and Matt. Because they deserve it.)

"So the three of you started it together?" Lindsay asks. She drinks red wine, Jess has discovered - he decides he likes that too - and has already offered to call an Uber for anyone who needs it at the end of the night. Met with some bemused stares and a few grins, she didn't even blink - a kind woman, who is unashamed of her own earnestness. Yeah, Jess likes her. "Was it one of those basement startup situations? Were you printing books out of someone's garage?"

"We actually did have our own printing equipment, do you remember?" Matthew asks. "In that first bookstore. I mean, it was for like really fancy books, and we broke the thingy after the second time we used it, so - "

"You could only do one at a time, it was like a vanity thing," Chris interrupts, rolling his eyes. "We used it for that chapbook by that horrible poet Jess dated."

"Hey," Jess says, "Carmen wasn't horrible. She just had anger issues - but she was in therapy!"

"A waste of expensive paper, if you ask me," Chris continues, as if Jess hadn't even spoken. "You'll come to learn this about our good friend Jess, Lindsay, if you stick around - he only dates disasters. Or stuck up rich girls."

"That's a fucking lie," Jess says. "Also rich, coming from you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"He's been having a torrid affair - yes I said _torrid,_ that's what it is - with a man much too young for him," Jess explains to Lindsay, who is watching the three of them over the rim of her wine glass, her lips pursed with amusement. "He's barely even twenty. Hey - hey! Don't get upset, I'm just telling her the truth. She deserves to know."

"You rotten fink," Chris says, gesturing with his martini glass. The last dregs of his drink splash over the side and onto Matthew's arm, who squawks in indignation. "Adrian is twenty-_two,_ thank you very much, and he might be stuck up but he's not rich. So there - ow!"

Matt, who has clearly just kicked him under the table, grins. "His daddy is."

"Adrian Laurent," Jess confides to Lindsay, who is now giggling cutely at them. "Son of the Manhattan Laurents. Cut off by his parents, is the understanding, but he's got a big fat trust fund waiting in the wings - oh hey Christopher, when you said you were working on a retirement plan, that wasn't what you meant, was it?"

"Fuck you," says Chris sulkily.

"So you _do_ date stuck up rich girls," Lindsay says, turning to Jess.

"What? No. What?" Jess rolls his eyes at the other two, making faces at him over her shoulder. "I mean, here and there, I guess. There's plenty of them who turn up at our parties. The author thing is like catnip to the Ivy League set."

"Classy, Jess," Matt chimes in. He taps Lindsay's elbow. "That's his way of trying to impress you by how experienced he is."

"I'm not - fuck you," Jess says, crumbling into a laugh. Lindsay seems brightly amused still, content to lean back and watch the byplay. "If I was trying to impress her I would be showing her all my literary prizes, asshole, not talking about what a huge slut I am."

"He is a slut," Chris says sadly. "We've tried to rehabilitate him, but he doesn't want to be helped."

"That's right, that's right," Lindsay says, narrowing her eyes and wagging her finger at the table, "I remember that from the job interview - the O. Henry Prize, right? And longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner. By the end of it I was definitely impressed, and I don't even _read._"

"That's why I hired her," Chris says to Jess. "I knew she had a good head on her shoulders."

"You don't read?" Jess asks. Lindsay shakes her head mid-drink, the stem of her glass wagging back in forth. "I don't buy that. I bet you read. I bet you read like - Jodi Picoult novels, and...I don't know. Dorothea Benton Frank."

"Oh God," Lindsay sputters. "My _mother_ reads those."

Jess grins. "James Patterson."

"No! No way." Lindsay's shoulders straighten, in the face of a challenge. "Actually, I like sci-fi. And horror."

"What up!" Matthew shouts. "Called it!" He smacks Chris' shoulder so hard he staggers against the table.

"I met Joe Hill at New York Comicon last year," Lindsay says proudly. "I have a picture with him where he's holding this Spider-Woman plushie that I bought."

"Stephen King!" Jess says triumphantly. "I should've known. Pretty girls always love Stephen King."

Lindsay grins at him, like she knows something he doesn't. "I need another drink. Does anyone want anything?"

"Yes, we do," Matthew answers, "but you better not put it on your tab. Jess - go with her."

"I wasn't going to! Seriously, you don't have to come with me - "

"How are you gonna carry four drinks? Come on." Jess nudges her shoulder with his elbow, draining the last of his bourbon as he rises from the booth. "We're hip to your game, sister. You're way too nice - Chris will drink you out of house and home."

"If Jess is paying, then I want a cocktail," Chris demands, shoving his martini glass aside. "Lindsay, pick out the fruitiest one. No pun intended."

"You betcha," Lindsay replies, with one hundred percent seriousness, and Jess nearly trips over a barstool.

_You betcha,_ Matt mouths silently, as Jess passes his chair. Jess smacks the side of his head, and doesn't feel bad about it.

There are two other tables of their people in various spots around the bar - the distribution people are in a booth by the door, and wave at Jess as they pass, and two of the girls from reception are huddled over somebody's cell phone at a two-topper. Lindsay keeps up with him easily in the semi-drunken crowd, looking completely unbothered, and edges up next to him at the bar like she's at a garden party instead of a fake Irish pub in downtown Philly on what's looking to be a messy Friday night.

"Were you just drinking the house red?" Jess asks, elbowing out a little space for her. "Because they have a wine list here. I think."

"House is fine," Lindsay says. "Are you hitting on me?"

Jess coughs on his own spit, caught off guard.

"I just wanted to be clear about it," she says apologetically. "Sorry, I'm kind of a blunt person. Are you okay? Do you need some water?" She reaches for the free jug, next to her arm, and starts to pour him a glass.

"I'm fine - yes, okay, I'll drink the water," Jess says, taking it obediently. "I'm...not really sure how to answer that question."

"It's okay if you are."

"Would you be...on board, if I was?"

"I would be...open to the idea," Lindsay says, her head tilted askew, like a bird. "We work together."

"Yeah." Jess glances over at the bartender, who is still caught up with the large crowd of college kids to their left, and takes the opportunity to look at her, as she's looking over too. She's beautiful - no denying that. Funny, smart. She's definitely never read his books, which is a plus in the pro column at this point. And she's wearing sneakers underneath her dress pants, which is the most charming thing Jess has seen in months. "Matt and Chris really like you."

"I really like them." She bites her lip. "I kind of really need this job. It's not that I couldn't find another one, I guess, but - every other place that was giving me interviews was in New York, and I really can't afford to commute right now. And God, I can't even imagine what a headache it would be to try to move there."

"It's a lot harder now than it used to be," Jess agrees. "Otherwise I'd still be there myself."

She smiles faintly. "You're from there? Originally, I mean?"

"Yeah - Long Island."

"But you don't have the accent!"

"You should hear me around my mom," Jess says wryly. "I sort of trained myself out of it, but when I'm around her and my stepdad it just comes right back out."

Lindsay grins. "Say 'cawfee.'"

"No," Jess says.

"Please?"

"Fuck no," Jess says, grinning at her. "You gotta buy me dinner first."

"Fair enough." Her grin dims a little, and she peers sideways at him through her eyelashes. "What's your last name again?"

"Mariano," Jess says. He finally catches the bartender's eye, who gives him a 'you're next' nod. "Do you want to Google me really quick? I'll pretend I won't notice."

"I can wait until I go to the bathroom," Lindsay replies. "More time to scroll that way."

"Makes sense," Jess says.

* * *

Jess honestly doesn't make a habit of messing around with coworkers, but this is mostly because the majority of his coworkers are college kids, up until now. The only other people who have stuck around on any kind of long term basis are Marlena - a lesbian who runs their warehouse with an iron fist - and Karla, who is married with two cute little kids.

Lindsay is understandably skeptical, and a few more drinks in, Jess is less interested in talking her out of her hesitance and more interested in making her laugh. Things are simpler when your goals are simple. The complicated shit - sex, work, literary fiction - can be dealt with in the morning.

"Now, watch, he's about to go in for his signature move," Jess says, pointing rather obviously with his glass. Chris has long abandoned them for the comforts of Adrian's two-story apartment in Washington Square, but Matthew is laying the moves on an unimpressed-looking woman in a sundress out on the sidewalk. Through the open balcony windows of the smoking patio, Lindsay and Jess are watching and providing commentary. "He's showing her pictures of his cats, and - bam. In for the kill."

"Brushing the hair away from the eyes, a classic," Lindsay says in approval. "Not too pushy, but not subtle either."

"Hm, yes, I agree," Jess says. "Hold on a minute, you just have a little - "

Lindsay laughs, batting his hand away as he reaches for her bangs, which have been falling into her eyes all night. Jess doesn't know how women put up with that shit. His own relationship with his hair comes down to 'is it clean?' and 'will I get kicked out of restaurants?' "You are absolutely shameless!"

"Yes, I've heard that," Jess says, letting his hand fall back to the table with a shrug. "I mean, you had some lint, but whatever. Don't have to take my word for it."

"Tell me," Lindsay says, angling her shoulders inward as she props her chin on her knuckles. She's taken off her suit jacket, revealing this ghastly pink blouse underneath, which makes her look like some sort of Broadway backup singer. "Do you make passes at every new employee you guys hire? I'm just trying to figure out if this is some sort of hazing ritual or something."

"It's not hazing," Jess says. He swallows, faintly alarmed at the idea. "Wait, do Chris and Matt haze people? Did they tell you had to pick up a package from the warehouse on your first day?"

"Um, yes, but I didn't believe them and then Britney from accounting came by and yelled at them," Lindsay says. "Have you considered an HR department, maybe?"

"Yeah, his name is Walter but he fucking sucks," Jess says glumly. "You'll understand once you meet him."

"Wait - the loud guy with the toupee?"

"We can't fire the HR guy for being mean to people," Jess complains, "I mean - we probably _could,_ but we'd need to cover our ass about it and the only person who's qualified to advise us is the guy we wanna fire, so."

"I can help with that," Lindsay says confidently.

"What - seriously?"

"I worked in HR at my last job," she explains.

"Oh," Jess says, at length. That explains the floral jackets. "Oh, Jesus. Chris was right, I really can't sleep with you."

Lindsay blinks her big eyes at him in confusion. "Um."

"Can you do me a favor and try to look a little uglier?" Jess asks. She's startled into laughter. "No seriously - I wasn't trying to be gross, and I really did just invite you out to get to know you. But then, you know. You're very beautiful."

"Thank you," Lindsay says, grinning widely, her eyes sparkling.

"And very sweet." Jess does a double take at himself. "And I'm drunk. Wow."

"You're sweet too," Lindsay says, tapping the base of her glass against the side of his wrist, "when you drink."

"Thank you." Jess frowns down at his own hands, surprised at himself. He's not usually this pushy, or this impulsive. And he still can't place where he knows her from. "What's _your_ last name?"

"Lister."

He shakes his head. "Doesn't ring a bell. I'm gonna take a wild guess that you haven't spent much time in Long Island."

"Never been there," Lindsay says. "And I just moved to Philly a month ago. Only been here once or twice before I moved."

A stone of dread settles into Jess' gut. "Where _are_ you from?"

"Well, New Hampshire originally, but my folks moved us to Connecticut when I was a junior in high school," Lindsay says, and Jess almost chokes on his bourbon. "This really small town outside Hartford - you probably haven't even heard of it - "

"Stars Hollow," Jess blurts. Lindsay's face pales, and she lifts her head up to look at him. The edges of his vision sharpen all of a sudden, like the transition from a flashback into present day in a movie. "Holy - "

" - shit," Lindsay says, "holy shit, holy shit!" She leaps to her feet, pointing. "You're - you're that guy! Diner guy!"

"Diner guy's _nephew,_ actually," Jess says, still frowning deeply. "Did we - did we have a math class together?"

"Yes! Ohmigod, I remember now - you sat in the back, and you hardly ever showed up. But your locker was across from mine, I used to see you in the cafeteria…" something else must occur to her then, because her face goes even paler, and one palm rises to cover her mouth. "Oh my God."

"What?" Jess asks nervously. He still doesn't really remember her, other than a faded memory of a blonde girl with pink braces - if that was even her. There had been quite a few blonde girls with braces, at Stars Hollow High. "Did I say something mean to you? I was kind of a dick back then. Hazards of being a miserable youth - "

"I have to go," Lindsay interrupts, scrambling for her jacket and her purse. "I'm really sorry, I just - I have to go - "

"Hey, hold on," Jess says, abandoning his drink and pushing back from the table to catch her arm, alarmed by her haste. "Look, I'm really sorry if I did something to you back then, honestly - don't leave, please - "

"I'm sorry," Lindsay says again, her face oddly stricken. Some instinct of Jess' tells him to let go of her, which he does, and her shoulders instantly relax. "You didn't do anything - it's not your fault. I just - I just have to go. Okay? I'm _really_ sorry."

She looks like she might be about to cry. "Okay," Jess says, feeling suddenly very sober.

"I'll see you Monday, okay?" Lindsay says, smiling wanly. She doesn't meet his eyes.

"Please let me call you a car," Jess says. He reaches out to touch her shoulder, but stops himself at the last second. "I'll stay here, you can wait for it outside. But it would make me feel better, because you're upset. Is that okay?"

She bites her lip. "That's really nice of you."

"I moonlight as a decent guy," Jess says, pulling out his phone. "But only on weekends. Here - put in your address."

Lindsay takes his cell with shaky hands, still visibly upset. But when she hands it back, she meets his gaze, and she looks moderately more composed. "Thank you. Honestly."

"You're welcome." They stand there for a second, caught in some awkward tension that Jess doesn't understand, until Lindsay breaks eye contact again, looking down to fiddle with her purse. "Do you want me to leave now?"

"If you do, then the Uber driver will get confused," Lindsay says wryly. She shakes her head, rubbing at one of her eyes with two fingers, taking a deep, bracing breath. "Do you smoke, Jess?"

"I'm a writer from New York, of course I smoke," he tries to joke, and is rewarded with a small smile. "Do you? You don't strike me as the type."

"I'm full of surprises," Lindsay says, sounding dry, almost bitter. "Come on. Share one with me while we wait."

"Alright," Jess says, still confused but willing to go with it. It's a feeling that he's sort of used to, when it comes to women.

* * *

The first thing Jess does when he gets home is Google her, which gives him nothing. Then he does a search on Facebook, which is moderately more successful, which means that she _has_ one - but it's totally locked down, her profile picture just a bland shot of her arm-in-arm with an older woman who is clearly an elderly relative, and her 'About' section is almost totally empty. Jess clicks on the 'mutual friends' list out of desperation, but most of the people they have in common are people from the office. The only Stars Hollow name they have in common is Morty, which doesn't mean anything since Morty's page is actually Babette, and Babette friends everybody.

Jess wouldn't say he visits Luke often, especially now that Rory is living there again with her daughter, the two of them taking up permanent residence in the diner's corner booth. Lorelai Gilmore the Third is her name, although Luke and Lorelai call her 'Nori' for some reason nobody's explained to Jess, and of course she's Stars Hollow's most adored citizen. Jess feels super awkward about the whole thing in general.

But he's kept in touch - made an effort to, actually, since he's occasionally reminded that Luke is not a young man anymore, and his mom's not getting any healthier either, what with her chain smoking habit and the occasional coke binges she and TJ indulge in now that Doula is old enough to spend the night at Uncle Luke's house. As Jess himself has gotten older, he's started to come to terms with the realities of life, which will probably include a heart attack at some point - Luke or _somebody_ Jess cares about, God knows the Mariano/Danes family isn't known for low blood pressure - and he doesn't want to be the person who finds out last. So - he's tried. He goes down for Thanksgiving, and white knuckles his way through the Gilmore Girl Show. He chats with his sister on the phone, he responds to his mother's emails - even the stupid chain ones, or the fake-science articles she sends him about cannabis pills, or whatever the hell she's into lately. He even went to one of the town festivals, the last time he was there. _Willingly._ (Mostly.)

He spends most of his Saturday pacing, trying to focus on writing and failing, then trying to read and not getting very far with that either. He can't get the look on her face out of his head - like she was on the verge of tears, just because he used to live in her hometown? Chris is going to fucking kill him, if Jess has managed to scare her away completely. Plus, he feels bad.

So he calls April. "Lindsay _Lister?_" she says incredulously. "Lindsay Lister works for you. At the publishing house?"

"No, at my other business - _yes _at the publishing house," Jess says. "She's the new...office person." It occurs to him that they haven't actually given her an official title. "Also maybe the HR person. But she does travel arrangements too. Office manager?"

"Of all the gin joints in all the world," April says, still sounding incredulous. "Wow."

"Who _is_ she?" Jess asks, nearly tearing out his hair in frustration. "We didn't even recognize each other at first, until she mentioned where she was from. I _think_ I remember her from high school? If I even talked to her at all, it must've been, like, nothing - but she looked like she saw a fucking ghost when she remembered _me,_ so there's gotta be something I'm missing - "

"Oh - oh wow," April says, "you don't know the story?"

"Obviously not."

"The Dean and Rory story?" The names hit Jess squarely in the solar plexus. "Not like - when you lived here, but afterwards. When they had that affair."

Jess fumbles for his desk chair and lowers himself into it slowly, his hangover from the morning suddenly returning with a vengeance. "Oh. Yes, I have. I have heard parts of that story."

"I mean, I was only like eleven when this happened, and I hadn't even met Luke yet," April says quickly, "so I only know the facts from Lorelai's friend Sookie, who told me when she was a little tipsy at the Autumn Haybale Race a few years ago, so I don't know all the details, but…" April takes an audible breath. "Anyway, Lindsay was Dean's wife. The person he and Rory were, uh. Cheating on. And I guess the whole thing, when it came out, was pretty ugly."

"Jesus," Jess says, lowering his aching head into his free hand.

"So, yeah, no wonder she looked like she wanted to throw up," April continues, not unsympathetic, but still as blunt as ever. It's one of the reasons she's one of the family members Jess actually likes talking to - how she can be really nice, in a really mean way. "She probably remembered you as...you know. Rory's boyfriend."

Jess remembers very well how the entire fucking town had set their eyes on him, the second he'd set eyes on Rory - if he's being honest, they were never alone in that relationship for that exact reason. If it wasn't Dean, it was Lorelai, if it wasn't Lorelai it was Luke, and if it wasn't any of them then it was some random lady who once babysat her in second grade, and wanted to know _all_ about Jess' intentions. It'd been like going through puberty in a fish bowl - he still doesn't know how Rory survived it. "Yeah. No wonder."

"I can't believe she ended up at your office, of all places! That's _so_ weird," April says. "Small world, huh?"

Jess stares at his black laptop screen morosely. Chris is _definitely_ going to kill him. "No kidding."

* * *

You know, if they had a _decent_ HR person, then Jess would have someone to ask for advice, but all they have is Walter, who really is terrible. He eats donuts at his desk but never cleans it, so it's always sticky, and he just fucking yells at everybody, and so Jess walks into work Monday morning with the generally doomed air of someone who is about to be in a real weird situation.

Lindsay's not at her desk, which doesn't necessarily mean anything since Jess is early. So like a big fat coward, Jess retreats into his office to wait for the inevitable, which comes around mid-morning, with a soft knock on the door that he knows has to be Lindsay. Chris and Matt never knock - they just barge in, and sometimes throw things.

"Hey." She looks a little sheepish, but otherwise normal, with absolutely no trace of that stricken realization she'd worn Friday night. "Sorry - do you have a minute?"

"Yeah, sure. Yeah." Jess stands up, so they're on equal footing, but standing _behind_ his desk also feels weird, so he ends up walking around to sit on the edge like some kind of high school principal trying to be cool. Lindsay doesn't even blink. "Are you, uh - feeling better?"

"Much." She clasps her hands, and seems to gather her courage, even nodding a little to herself in the moment before she speaks, which really is incredibly fucking cute. "I just wanted to clear the air a little, if that's okay. I assume you...put the pieces together? About why…?"

"Ah, yes, I was...reminded of the details," Jess says delicately, wincing.

"Well. Yes." She nods again. "First off, I want to apologize, because I'm sure that freaked you out, and I'm sorry about that. Secondly, I want to assure you that I had _no_ idea who you were when I applied for this job - seriously. I know how this looks, but I honestly didn't even recognize your name until you mentioned Stars Hollow the other night - "

"Whoa, no, whoa," Jess says, waving his hands, "that's not even - no, I wasn't even thinking that, it's fine - "

"Please let me finish?" she asks, and Jess obligingly shuts up. "I know you probably weren't thinking that, but let me tell you anyway, okay? I didn't know who you were, and I didn't apply for this job on purpose. And I really hope that...it's not going to affect our working relationship," she finishes, a little hesitantly, like she's unsure if that's the right thing to say.

"I think," Jess says slowly, "that if anything was going to affect our working relationship, it was me making terrible passes at you all night. Which I'm very sorry about, sincerely, and it won't happen again, I promise - "

"Oh," Lindsay says, sounding surprised, "that's not - "

"Now you let me finish," Jess interrupts, and she cuts off her own sentence with a small smile. "I do honestly feel bad about that - I was drunk, and it was inappropriate, and the last thing I want to do is make you uncomfortable, which I obviously did at the end. So. I'm very sorry."

"You didn't make me feel uncomfortable," Lindsay assures him softly. "What made me uncomfortable was...being taken off guard, when I remembered where I knew you from. And since that's not going to happen a second time, I think we're good."

"Good," Jess says, still not a hundred percent reassured, since he remembers very clearly telling her she was beautiful. Which seems like just a terrible cherry on top of an awkward cake.

"So, um, professionally, I don't think we're in any trouble, but," Lindsay fidgets a little with her hands, lacing her fingers together and bouncing them against one of her thighs as she speaks, "personally, I just want you to know - it's not like it bothers me anymore. What happened with uh, you know, I mean - it was a long time ago, and I've moved on, and - "

"Hey, you don't have to explain anything to me," Jess starts, but she waves him off.

"No but I do, because I think we were becoming friends and I'd like to keep going with that if we could," Lindsay explains. She takes a deep breath. "Look. You obviously know what happened, and you know why I freaked out - it was just that it surprised me, that's all. Dean and I...it really was a long time ago. And what happened with Rory..." Here, she looks a little queasy, swallowing a couple times before she continues. "Yes, that part still bothers me, but not so much that it keeps me up at night or anything. Does that make sense?"

"Yeah," Jess says. He sighs. "I know it's a weird thing, a hard thing - that we're sort of associated already through something bad that happened to you, and I definitely don't want to _remind_ you of something that's painful, so I would understand if you wanted to...keep your distance."

"I have a feeling," Lindsay says, with a slow smile, "that that's not going to be possible, in this office."

Jess can't help but smile back. "I swear we're professional. Sometimes."

"I've seen glimpses of it, here and there." She lets her hands fall loosely against her sides, and smiles ruefully. "Look, to be honest I was having a really good time before that happened. And I don't have very many friends here yet, and I've been worrying all weekend that I _completely_ freaked you out, and I just...was hoping we could start over. Is that possible?"

"Yes, duh, of course," Jess says, reaching out to take her offered handshake with a short laugh. "I mean - we don't _actually_ know each other, so. It should be easy."

"Right," Lindsay says, practically beaming as they shake hands for the second time. "We just have...people in common. That's all."

"Very diplomatic," Jess praises. "That's what we should say when Chris and Matt ask us about it."

She nods, looking very serious. "Well we definitely shouldn't tell them the _truth._"

"Oh, definitely not," Jess agrees.

* * *

The awkwardness fades quickly, and soon Jess can't remember why he'd been so weirded out: it starts to become the most natural thing in the world to see her ratty old Buick parked behind his in the lot, to wave a 'good morning' at her as she walks past his office with her bulging messenger bag and steaming thermos of coffee, to stop by her desk around midday to make sure she's not working through lunch again. She's always smiling at him - waving back, catching his eye at meetings to roll her eyes at something, forwarding him funny emails from the indie authors who are always sending in their unsolicited manuscripts or weird comments they get on their social media accounts. She's got a very secret, very vindictive sense of humor that Jess finds incredibly charming.

She's friendly and efficient, and a lot smarter and more competent than people give her credit for (on account of her flowery clothes and those sweet, folksy figures of speech she likes to use) which Jess starts to figure out is an impression she gives on purpose. She likes to be underestimated, is his feeling, which is confirmed the first time he sees her rip Matthew to shreds over his expenses - an incredibly entertaining staff meeting that instantly becomes legendary among the staff at large.

"I love her," Chris says ardently, pulling Jess into the breakroom one morning to show him the cookies Lindsay baked for Valentine's Day. There's an assortment of fancy hipster flavors, with little labels written on the back of business cards (the ones with common allergens are in bright red Sharpie): white chocolate with matcha green tea, dark caramel with butterscotch, salted potato chip with dark chocolate, sugared honeycomb with orange zest. Jess picks one up and thinks for the millionth time about what a stupid fucking idiot Dean Forrester is. "Jess, I want her to work for us forever."

"Matt's not such a big fan anymore," Jess says amusedly, trying one of the honeycomb ones. His eyes almost roll back in his head. "Oh my God."

"Right? Oh my God." Chris snags the last matcha one, wrapping it in a napkin and stuffing it in his suit pocket. "If anything, that's a perk. I can't believe he's been expensing his fucking Tinder dates."

"I can," Jess says wryly. He loves Matt, would die on a battlefield for Matt (should the need ever arise), but Matt is an irresponsible trust fund kid who's never had to work an actual job in his life. Even his position here is mostly just a formality, since his parents invested the startup cash they needed to get going twelve years ago. Mostly he schmoozes at the parties, which is very helpful - extremely helpful sometimes - but as far as business acumen goes, the guy is worse than hopeless. "Chris, man, can I ask you something?"

"No, you shouldn't sleep with her," Chris says.

"Give it a rest," Jess replies, rolling his eyes. "I was gonna ask if you think it's a good idea to bring her with us to Portland."

"Sure, why not," Chris says with a shrug. "She can tweet about it. Have you been reading our twitter lately?"

"Uh," Jess says, "no."

"She's really funny, and I think people might actually be reading them now," Chris says. He leans in, his face creased in concern. "Why are you really asking?"

Jess takes another cookie. "No reason."

"Oh my God, do you _like_ her?" Chris hisses, punching him in the arm.

"No! Fuck off," Jess says, grabbing two more - one of each flavor - and sticking them in his pocket like Chris had just done. "I was just checking if another person was in the budget. Jesus."

"Yeah, you're so worried about the budget," Chris says, rolling his eyes. "That's it - I'm setting you up with Dana."

"What! No," Jess sputters. "I'm not gonna blind date your fucking cousin, Christopher."

"She's nice, and she really wants to meet you! If you just gave her a chance, then maybe you'd actually manage to date somebody healthy for a change," Chris insists. "She's got a 401k and she's never been married, _and_ she's not related to anyone in your family, so right away she's got a leg up on the competition."

"Fuck you," Jess says.

Chris narrows his eyes at him. "I'm putting Lindsay in a separate hotel for Portland," he threatens. "In a totally different part of the city. So don't even think about it."

Jess would feel insulted, if he didn't secretly think that was sort of a good idea. "I'm still not dating your cousin," he says.

"Your loss," Chris says, and takes another cookie.

* * *

AWP is always a long, annoying pain in the ass ever since Jess started to get famous on his own - most of the time he attends on behalf of the publishing house, but since the O. Henry prize his agent has started double-booking him for panels and shit, too. Last year Jess did three different ones in the same day _and_ still had to help Matthew run their booth on the conference floor, which absolutely sucked. He was so burned out by the end, he doesn't even remember half of what he'd said on that last panel, which had been moderated by Karen Joy Fowler. Jess felt extremely cheated; he hadn't even gotten to talk to her, really.

It still feels like a weird dream - his success. His therapist calls it 'imposter syndrome,' which Jess thinks is an overly complicated way of talking about his inferiority complex. He's working on the final drafts of his third novel now, which his agent is determined will win some _real_ prizes - 'Booker' has been thrown around once or twice, which always makes Jess laugh sort of hysterically to himself as he reads the emails - and he has to keep reminding himself that it's real, that it's actually happening.

His sister Lily is his harshest critic - she's still living with Jimmy and Sasha, now well into her twenties, running the hotdog stand practically by herself ever since Sasha's diagnosis. It seems to be a situation that works well for everyone: Jimmy seems much happier being a full-time house husband, and Lily seems content to bum around at home, spending most of her free time reading and making weird/funny YouTube videos with her mom. She's edited everything Jess has ever written, and takes it personally whenever he tries to pay her. She keeps him honest, he's found.

_Are you in love?_ she emails him, replying back with some rambling critique of a piece Jess has been working on for an anthology Matt wants to put together. _Because this is way more sentimental than your usual. I mean, I like it! Don't get me wrong. But I kept feeling like you were revealing more than you intended to. Do you wanna call me?_

Jess does not really want to call her, since calling Lily inevitably means a conversation with Jimmy and Sasha, and while he has dragged himself into a much healthier place regarding his dad and his stepmother, he still doesn't like to rub it in his own face, so to speak. _I'm not in love,_ he emails back instead, _you always assume I'm in love every time I write anything that's optimistic. Are_ you_ in love?_

_I'm too busy to fall in love,_ which is what Lily always says, even though Jess knows for a fact that she's head over heels for Maggie, the girl who does face painting a few yards down from the hotdog stand on the boardwalk. Jess has been patiently nudging her for months to make a move. (As subtly as he can, which is: not very subtly at all.) _But I'm very good at sensing when other people are in love, and I think you're in love. Did you meet somebody? Tell me, or I'll tell Dad you're dating someone, and then you'll _really_ be in trouble._

Jess groans out loud when he reads that one; Jimmy in his middle-to-late age has developed a passionate wish for grandchildren, which is now solely Jess' responsibility since Lily has declared herself the "gayest kid-hating lesbian ever," direct quote. So he cracks his knuckles, and writes a two-thousand word email about a made up girlfriend, whom he names Evelyn. She's a professional disc golfer, she's allergic to parrots, mostly illiterate (grew up in a cult, very sensitive story, he'll tell her later) and the sex is absolutely amazing.

Lily sends it back to him in a Google Doc with editing notes. His character development could use some work, she says.

"I don't think it's sentimental at all," Lindsay says, over lunch one day. She's been slowly working her way through Jess' body of work; she started with his first novel, which now makes Jess cringe to read (he was way too young to publish; it's embarrassing to even think about it now) and has begun to insist on reading the same drafts that Jess sends to Chris and Matt. She's too nice to be useful - she flatters him too much - but Jess finds himself aching for her opinion anyway. It feels dangerous; like flirting. Which they haven't done, since that first night - but this sort of thing feels more intimate anyway. Jess has a bad feeling about it. "It's more...wistful."

"My sister doesn't really have a good sense of the difference between those two things," Jess explains. "She's too Californian."

Lindsay grins at him. "Is that another way of saying she's not cynical enough? Or is it _too_ cynical?"

"Maybe a little of both," Jess says. "Cynical about relationships, but not cynical enough about love itself."

"Sounds like your typical twentysomething to me," Lindsay says. She wears a pendant every day, that she normally keeps tucked beneath her collars, but leaning over his computer at his desk, it's slipped loose. Jess keeps getting distracted by it, swinging over the keys every time she reaches for the mouse. "Are you saying you don't believe in love as a concept? I wouldn't have thought so, after reading your writing."

"What do you mean?" Jess asks, taken aback.

"I mean you write about love all the time," Lindsay says, with a little laugh. Like it's obvious. "Come on. Everything I've read so far is about love. Different kinds of love, sure - but it's still love."

Jess doesn't know how to feel about that. He writes about families, mostly, which he's sure surprises nobody. His first novel, _The Subsect,_ was about a man who had escaped a cult, but left his son behind; Rory had gone on and on for ages about how heartbreaking it was. Most of his writing tends to focus on some sort of betrayal, or unsolvable conflicts; Jess likes puzzling out situations where everyone's at fault, but also nobody is, all at the same time. "I never really...thought about it like that."

"Really though," Lindsay continues, "all good fiction deals with love, if you really break it down to its most basic parts. That's writing 101, isn't it? A hero's motivation comes from devotion to either himself, his community, or something he believes in. Right?"

"You're getting too collegiate for me now," Jess jokes. "Keep that scriptwriting nonsense to yourself, Double El."

Lindsay shrugs playfully. "_Your_ characters are always outwardly motivated, is my point," she says. "You write about people who want to connect, but can't, for some reason. That's the tragedy at the root of this story: that he wants to forgive her, but because of what happened between them, she can't _allow_ herself to be forgiven. The ending is sort of happy, but the romanticism of it is sad - they'll never be like they were when they were young. They'll always have that betrayal between them, even though they're still together."

Jess is quiet for a moment, staring at the remnants of their sandwiches, pushed aside by his laptop, the draft of the story still up on the screen. He feels sort of exposed, in a way that he rarely does when people read his writing. Even the harshest reviews never make him feel so...seen. "I guess you're right. I was trying to write a happy ending, though. Maybe I'm the one who's too cynical."

"There's a difference between 'realistic' and 'cynical,'" Lindsay chides gently. "That's why you're so good, you know. You can make the really difficult parts of being human - the sad stuff, the painful stuff - seem like a happy ending. Because it is, isn't it? That's just what life is - it's not all one thing. You can hate someone you love and still love them, still be really happy with them even though they hurt you, or maybe they're not totally compatible with you, or whatever - and that's not a bad thing. That's just part of loving people." She smiles at him. "_That's_ why you win awards, Jess. You understand how it works, in a way a lot of people never will."

Jess stares at her, his heart in his throat, and finds that he doesn't have a clue what to say.

"Anyway." She shrugs, hopping off the edge of his desk nonchalantly, like she hasn't just fundamentally shaken something inside of him, something that Jess himself hadn't even been aware of an hour ago. "I did like it. I think Lily's right about the opening, though - you need a little bit more lead up. Starting the story with a fight is off-putting when we don't know the context."

Jess nods, a little dumbly. "Thanks."

"And you're coming to the reading tonight, aren't you?" Lindsay asks, gathering up their trash quickly, putting his desk back to its previous state before Jess can even move to stop her. She's got the mom instincts that a lot of women seem to have: always tidying things up, straightening their surroundings. It always used to annoy him, when he was around girls like that - girlfriends who cooed and doted on him, women who always wanted to know where he was every second, tried to cook him homemade dinners and be touching him _constantly_ \- it always made Jess feel boxed in, scrutinized in a way that made him deeply uncomfortable. With Lindsay however, it feels different: to her credit, it seems to come from a less desperate place. She does things for people because she's just…_nice._ And it never feels like she wants anything out of him in return.

"Yes, I'm coming. And no, I don't want to be in your tweets."

"Oh, come on." She pouts a little. "The videos are getting really popular."

"I'm very aware." Her new Twitter initiative is a series of short, staged videos - almost like skits - involving her dog, a grumpy, extremely lazy bulldog named Peanut. The joke is that Peanut is the publishing house's new CEO, and involves a lot of his giggling coworkers dressing the dog up in a business tie and taking pictures of him propped up at Jess' desk. "I'm not really sure it's doing us any favors in terms of getting people to take us seriously. You know - as a professional business."

"I wanna bring him with us to AWP," Lindsay says blithely. "Would they let him in? And if so, do I need to buy him a badge? Because I wanna do a whole thing with him at the booth - you know, show him networking, attending panels, the whole nine yards."

Jess scowls at her. "These are serious literature people, Lindsay. So no, I don't think they're going to let Peanut in."

She laughs in his face. "You love him. I found those dog treats you hid in the bookshelf in the break room."

Jess had shoved them behind the romance novel galleys that have been sitting there untouched since the day they'd first moved into this office, thinking he was being clever. "Those aren't mine."

"Uh huh," Lindsay says, walking backwards out of his office.

"Seriously, I hate dogs," Jess says. He snaps his laptop shut irritably, seeing an email notification from Lily pop up out of the corner of his eye. "I still can't get the hair out of this desk chair. You owe me for drycleaning."

"Whatever you say," Lindsay says sweetly.

* * *

Would it be the weirdest thing ever, if it happened? Maybe. Probably as far as visiting Stars Hollow would go. But he's getting ahead of himself: Lindsay's probably not even interested anymore. She might be dating someone else, and even if she weren't it'd be a bad idea anyway, considering they work together. Also Jess has never had a relationship make it to the 'meeting family' stage anyway, unless you count Rory, which Jess doesn't, considering it was over a decade ago. They're just friends, and Jess is being stupid, and letting Chris' teasing get in his head, and also she's not his type! He keeps forgetting.

_Type?! WHAT TYPE,_ Lily emails, after a weak moment in which Jess actually confides in her (he'd been drunk at the time), _you don't have a TYPE. You fall for all kinds of women! Remember Letty?_

_Letty's off-limits,_ Jess sends back curtly. The only ex he's still sensitive about, Letty hadn't been his type either. A corporate lawyer, well put together, a little pretentious, expensive tastes - the polar opposite of anyone else he'd ever liked before, and she'd ripped his heart out and stomped on it, which goes to show that Jess should really just stick to the emotionally stunted poets and divorcees on the rebound that he normally dates.

_Send me a picture of her,_ Lily demands. _Also, fuck Stars Hollow. Who cares if it's awkward at your mom's house? It's ALREADY AWKWARD, JESS, YOUR EX-GIRLFRIEND'S MOM MARRIED YOUR UNCLE_

Jess huffs and doesn't reply for three days, which prompts Lily to start spamming him with Facebook messages until he gives in and tells her Lindsay's last name. Not even an hour later, Lindsay pops her head into his office, her phone in one hand, and says, "this is your sister, right? Lillian Kayler?"

"You don't have to friend her back," Jess says. "She's got too much time on her hands."

Lindsay smirks, and keeps the screen turned towards him so he can see her hitting the 'accept' button. "_You_ still haven't accepted my friend request, Jess. By the way."

Jess mumbles something and pretends he's distracted by something on his laptop screen. Lindsay smirks at him again, and pops right back out of his office without another word.

She's just always _right there_, always smiling at him and being cute with her stupid flower jackets and homemade snacks. Jess likes her dog, and yes, okay _fine_ he thinks the videos are funny, and he's dangerously close to letting her read the draft of the new book, which he's never done with a woman before - not even Letty. He wakes up in the morning and thinks about her first thing, some days, wonders what her apartment looks like as he shuffles around his own on the weekends, thinks about texting her all the time, wants to know her opinion about everything. He wants to ask her about her marriage to Dean - _desperately_ wants to know about it, actually, with a burning curiosity that he knows is inappropriate but he can't help himself. He wants to know all these weird things about her - her favorite color, her first concert, her first kiss, what her friends back in Hartford are like, the ones she references all the time casually - _Becca and I_ this, _Amanda and I_ that. He starts biting back the questions, because he knows they're no good. There's no work-related excuse for why he really wants to help her make cookies. It's just way too sappy a desire to mean anything but bad news.

Two weeks before AWP, Lindsay flies to Orlando to visit her parents for a few days, and Jess finds himself depressed, missing her and feeling ridiculous about it. She calls him on the second day to remind him about a meeting he needs to be at and then rants for ten minutes about traffic, and he's in such a good mood afterwards that everyone at the office seems a little freaked out, actually, and Matt keeps asking him if he got laid. This is when Jess knows he has to do something about it.

"You're fucking with me, right," Chris says tiredly. "I'm too busy right now to yell at you. Try again later."

"I'm not fucking with you," Jess says, his fist clenched below the desk. "I really would like to meet your cousin Dana. I think it's a good idea."

Chris just stares at him, his hand halfway suspended in the air, holding a file folder like a wordless threat.

"Does she, uh," Jess says, clearing his throat. "Does she like Italian? I know a good place."

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Chris asks. "Do you have cancer or something?"

"Look," Jess says thinly, leaning forward and grabbing Chris' arm, "we're friends, right? You think of me as a friend?"

"Oh Jesus, you _do_ have cancer," Chris says, stricken.

"No," Jess replies flatly. "No, but we're friends, we trust each other, and this is one of those times when I need to ask you for something and you need to just do it. I promise I will be a gentleman, I'm not going to break your cousin's heart, but I'm gonna be real with you here: I really, really need to get the hell out of my house this weekend. You feel me?"

Chris slowly lowers the file folder, narrowing his eyes the way he does when he's thinking. "Jess," he finally says, "you and Lindsay - "

"Don't, seriously," Jess says.

" - you're adults, that's all I was gonna say," Chris continues on, determinedly. "I'm sorry if I gave you too hard of a time about her. I really was just messing with you."

Jess releases his arm with a deep sigh, rubbing his face with his hand. "It's fine," he mumbles.

"How many people meet people to date at the office?" Chris says, shrugging. "It's not that big a deal. You're not her boss, you don't have the power to fire her or give her raises, so what's the problem? Come on, you've been twisted up about her since the very first day she started."

"It's complicated," Jess says, thinking that he really should tell Chris, at least, the history with Lindsay and Dean and Rory. Matthew might make fun of him, and nobody else they work with needs to know, but Chris would take it seriously. Still, it's not Jess' history to tell. "Can you please just...find me someone to have dinner with? Please? You're always fucking offering, and now that I'm asking you're telling me no, really?"

"Hm, let's see, do I want you to have a one night stand with my cousin because you're too emotionally stunted to date the girl you actually like? Can't imagine why I'm sour about that idea," Chris says. "Go on Tinder if you're that fucked up about it."

"Ugh," Jess says.

"Or, the honest and mature option," Chris says, "you could just, I don't know, ask her out. Like a grown up. The worst thing she could do is say no, man."

The problem is that he's wrong and right at the same time, and this is why Jess is so fucked up about it: she could say no, sure, and it might be awkward for awhile, but Lindsay's an honest person, cool in the way a lot of young professional people are cool. She knows how to ignore awkward things, how to find common ground with everyone in the office, how to smile and nod until the uncomfortable elephant in the room is gone. They could stay friends, and Jess would get over it eventually, and one day she'd find a better job and maybe they'd stay in touch but probably not, and this would be a weird story he could tell one day about this guy from high school he hated so much, he tried to steal his girl _twice._

Or she could say yes. And maybe this is the option that _would_ be the worst-case scenario: she says yes, and Jess gets to ask her all the questions he's been saving up, and her answers are just as charming as he's been imagining them to be. They make cookies together, and he finds out how she really feels about Dean and Rory now, and he gets even more invested, falls for her even more like he knows he could if he let himself. They date, and it works, because they work as friends and coworkers, and he knows it could be more, that spark that's been there since the very first night at the bar, and it starts to get serious, and he starts to think about it long term, and then one day he says the wrong thing, tells the wrong story, and it all goes wrong. He finds out that she only likes the idea of him because he's Rory Gilmore's ex-boyfriend, or maybe more likely - because she's too kind to do that, he can't even take the idea seriously - it doesn't work because she can't separate him out from Dean in her head, can't be with someone who reminds her of a girl who slept with her husband.

He's not giving her enough credit, probably, but Jess is too used to the worst case scenarios. His entire life had been a series of worst case scenarios, right up until something clicked, swiveled around on an invisible axis, and suddenly he was getting awards and making money. He still doesn't trust it, which sums up a lot of his emotional problems, really. Therapy doesn't fix that sort of thing overnight.

"Look, Jess," Chris says, "I've known you a long time, and I know that you're lonely. You've been lonely since the day I met you. Back in the day, I thought you were one of those guys that did it to yourself on purpose - you know, when you sabotage all the good stuff in your life, because you just like being miserable?"

"Oh, thanks a lot," Jess says dryly. Chris shrugs unapologetically.

"Maybe that was part of it when we were kids," he continues, "but now, after I know all the dirty laundry with your family, after I've seen you try over and over to make something last with women who are all wrong for you - I get it, man. I get why you're gunshy. But I also know that you'd be so good at it, Jess - and I know that you _want_ it, is the more important thing. You want the partner who's gonna do all the things, support you and appreciate you, back you up no matter what. And I've seen you try to figure it out - in your head, in your books, with your folks. I know you know how to recognize the real thing, because you've spent so much time thinking about what the real thing is. But you have to be brave enough to ask for it, which is the hard part. It's not gonna just fall into your lap."

"You think I don't know that?" Jess asks. "I'm in therapy, I've read all the books. I know it's something you have to build, but Chris - what happens when I ask, and then I find it, and then I fuck it up? What happens then?"

"Is that what you're scared of? Fucking up?"

"Isn't everybody?" Jess runs his hands through his hair, jittery and feeling stretched thin at the edges, like he's gone too long without sleep. "It's been a long time since I tried do something real with someone I really liked. It's just terrifying, that's all - I'd forgotten how terrifying it was. And there's just no getting around that, is there? You just have to feel it."

"Yeah," Chris says quietly, swallowing thickly. "Yeah, pretty much."

Jess tries to shake off the melancholy by jostling Chris' shoulder. "You should take your own advice and dump that trust fund kid. He's just wasting your time, Chris."

"Which is exactly what I want to do, at this stage in my life," Chris replies, with a lifted eyebrow, "waste some time. But I speak for myself, pal, nobody else."

"Uh huh."

"And stay away from my cousin," Chris says. "She's too good for you. I just decided."

"Fine," Jess replies glumly.

* * *

The AWP organizers unfortunately deny Peanut's attendance, which Lindsay takes in stride. Apparently she hadn't been looking forward to flying him out there anyway, and no way were they going to drive to the opposite corner of the country for a four-day conference.

"I have a solution," she confides, as they sit at a Starbucks at the Chicago airport, an hour into their layover with two more to go. They've been passing the time by hopping from coffee shop to coffee shop, competing to see who can get to the counter first to buy each other the most stuff. Lindsay keeps winning, and she keeps buying Jess little bags of chocolate espresso beans. He's got like three of them, now. "We'll film some stuff at the conference, and then edit Peanut in later. You know like - it'll be me standing in front of the booth, saying something like, 'wow! What a successful conference we had, Mr. Peanut! We made so many useful contacts!' And then it just cuts straight to Peanut, sleeping face down on the carpet at home."

"Or you could print out a picture of him and prop him up at the table with us," Jess suggests.

"I actually had buttons made," Lindsay confesses. "To give away at the booth."

"Good God."

"They only cost me like thirty bucks! And it's a legitimate marketing expense, Jess."

"I'm not wearing one."

"But Peanut will be so disappointed if you don't!"

"I'm not," Jess insists, while mentally preparing himself to wear one. He's definitely going to end up doing it.

Lindsay just shakes her head at him, scribbling a note to herself in her planner. She's got her badge tucked into the inside pocket, and under a tiny picture of her face reads _LL, Truncheon Books._ Matthew had bought them; Jess is surprised his own badge doesn't say _Fuckface Mariano,_ or something. It probably would, if the AWP people would've let him.

"Does it bother you?"

"Huh? Oh." Lindsay pulls the badge out and loops it around her neck with a grin. "Nah. People used to call me 'Double El' in high school. Better than 'Linds,' which is what Dean used to call me."

She's been referencing Dean more and more often - casually, in the way that you sometimes bring up people you used to know. She'd even spilled the beans to Chris and Matt last week that she'd been married briefly after high school - although she hadn't mentioned the Stars Hollow connection, naturally - and they'd all endured a few days of divorcee-related, _oh, no wonder Jess likes you!_ themed jokes.

"LL's better," Jess agrees. "It's very early 2000s teen movie. Like you're on a spunky volleyball team or something."

"I did play volleyball in high school."

"Of course you did."

"I bet you had me pegged as a cheerleader," Lindsay teases.

"I barely remember you," Jess reminds her, "and I skipped class so much anyway. You could tell me you were class president and I'd probably believe you."

"I remember _you_," Lindsay says. She's leaning forward on her elbows, her eyes a little dreamy. Maybe it's the airport that makes it easier to talk about openly - that they're in a liminal space, untethered from the normal world. Jess certainly feels much more at ease than he normally does, when they skirt around the issue of their shared relationship with that town. "You were always wearing some sort of jacket, even when it was hot outside, and you had a book with you constantly. You used to really piss off Mr. Baldwin when you would read during his lectures. When you'd talk back to him, and make him look stupid - that was really funny. People liked you because of that, you know."

"Did you like me?" Jess asks, unable to help himself. He doesn't wait for her answer. "It's okay, I already know about the rumor that I dropped out because I got sent to juvie. Also the one about getting arrested for flashing people on the bus. And the one about me and Shane Kiper having sex in the gym teacher's office." Jess pauses. "That one was half true - I only ever made it to second base with her."

Lindsay laughs. "Everyone talked shit about everyone," she says. "It was a small town - nothing ever happened. You were probably the most exciting thing to breeze through that school since our vice principal got fired for keeping booze in his office in ninth grade."

"Wasn't that the guy who went on to open one of the flower stands?"

"Yeah. He moved to Burlington Grove a couple years later, though."

"Do you ever go back?" Jess asks. "Now that your parents live in Florida? I mean, you lived in Hartford for years, you must still have friends around there."

Lindsay shrugs. "You can ask about it, you know," she says. "Dean. I know you're curious."

He winces. "It's none of my business."

"Oh, come on." She waves her hand dismissively. "It was a year and a half of my life, and it ended over a decade ago. I knew I freaked you out, that first night."

"You didn't."

"I did!"

"Okay, you did," Jess admits, "but only a little and I deserved it."

Lindsay just smiles, flipping her planner closed and running her thumbnail around the embossed metal corner of the cover. With her hair falling into her eyes, her face downturned, she looks particularly beautiful but also fairly sad, in a moment that seems designed to take his breath away. "He's married to someone else now, he's got kids. So does Rory. I would be a very foolish person to still be fixated on what happened."

"There's no timeline for getting over things that hurt you," Jess says with a scoff. "And there's no rubric for what's bad enough or hard enough to still affect you years later. You feel how you feel, and that's it."

"That's a very pragmatic way of looking at it," Lindsay says admiringly. "Very...you."

Jess is almost certain that's a compliment. "You know, my dad left us when I was twelve."

Lindsay doesn't reply, raising her eyebrows, her hand stalling on the cover of her planner.

"My mom still isn't over it," Jess continues. "I forgave him a long time ago - Lily and Sasha helped a lot with that. It's much easier to let someone back in when they come as a package deal with a mom and a sister who adore you."

"They sound nice," Lindsay says wistfully.

"They are," Jess says honestly. "They're such good people. Honest people. Even my dad - he's bipolar, you know. He wasn't diagnosed until he was thirty-nine. But that had a lot to do with the problems he and my mom had, and why he left us. It's not an excuse, but it explains a lot. Not everybody like me gets answers to their questions, you know? How many kids get left like I did - thousands, millions? And how many of them get their parents back, with such a good explanation for why? I might be the only one."

"You almost sound like you think you're lucky."

"I am," Jess admits, and realizes for the first time he's right. "It's - you know. I had a rough time growing up. My mom wasn't exactly a responsible parent, and she and Luke kind of played pinball with me for a while, which didn't help. But I got over it - pulled myself together. My mom, on the other hand - she lets things fester, and she holds grudges forever. I still can't even _mention_ my dad around her, let alone Lily and Sasha. And Luke - forget about it. When I left Stars Hollow to go live with Jimmy in Venice Beach, I was sure he would never forgive me."

"But he did," Lindsay says quietly. "For the most part, anyway."

"Yes," Jess says, thinking about April. "Eventually, I think he...readjusted."

"If you're trying to tell me that it's okay for me to still be angry, then I get it," Lindsay says. "It's what my parents tell me, what my friends tell me…"

"I'm not trying to tell you anything," Jess says with a shrug. "I guess I'm just trying to say I would understand. Like I understand my mom - I wish she would forgive him, for her own sake as well as mine - but I get why she hasn't. Why she can't. There are some things that...you can't ever let go."

Lindsay looks thoughtful, pausing significantly before she replies. "It must be difficult for you to be in-between," she says. "To be forced into choosing one or the other when you were younger, and now that you're an adult, to always be negotiating on behalf of hurt feelings and betrayals that you had nothing to do with...that's a lot to put on your kid. More than you deserve."

"It's taught me a lot," Jess says, thinking about April again. She handles it much better than Jess does, some days. "About a lot of different things."

"You are optimistic," Lindsay accuses. "I know you don't think you are, but you are."

"Maybe by comparison," Jess replies with a laugh. "But not compared to you. Next to you, I'm Friedrich Nietzsche."

"I get that from my dad," Lindsay says. "My mom - she's really negative, she always has been. My whole life, she always found something to criticize about me - my hair, my friends, my marriage. She's the reason I jumped into things so quickly with Dean - she always had a way of making me feel like I wasn't doing enough. And after I left him, she made me feel like it was my fault." Her face has soured, her eyebrows pinched together and her eyes locked on something far away. "Like if I'd only been a better wife, somehow, then he wouldn't have cheated on me. She never _said_ that, of course, but that's definitely what she thought. Living with her after the divorce...it was almost worse than anything Dean and Rory ever did to me. It was probably the worst thing that I've ever been through."

"That's...vile," Jess says, frowning.

Lindsay blinks, and shrugs. "That's my mom," she says. "She means well. I think." She laughs a little. "But my dad's different - I've never understood why they get along, because they're so opposite. He always sees the good in people. That's what he was worried about, after Dean. He was always reminding me that there were other good men in the world, that Rory probably didn't mean to hurt me, that I needed to get back out there and find a way to trust people again. At the time, I mean, it drove me _crazy,_ but now that I'm older I can see what he was trying to do."

"What is that quote, about how it's much harder to be kind in an unkind world than it is to let it harden you?" Jess asks. He pauses. "That might be from Star Wars, actually."

"Or Buffy, maybe," Lindsay says with a laugh.

"Whichever. I do admire that about you - that you make the effort to be genuine. So whatever Dean did to hurt you - he didn't ruin that."

"I wasn't going to let him," Lindsay says firmly. She tilts her head at him as she often does when they talk about personal things, blinking slowly, like she's studying him. Jess always feels like he's being swept up by a warm wind - as if her regard is a physical thing he can feel. "Ask what you really want to ask."

Fine. He takes a deep breath. "You know I still talk to Rory - that I'm friendly with her. Her mom's married to Luke, so I see her quite a bit. Does that bother you?"

"I've thought about that a lot, since I met you," Lindsay says. "I do this thing where I imagine the worst case scenario, so I can test myself, you know? What would happen if Rory walked up to us right now, and - I don't know, started saying all these catty mean things to me, and then you agreed with her, and then you dumped my frappucino on my head and walked off together holding hands. You know - realistic stuff."

"So we're like, the high school bullies in this scenario," Jess clarifies.

"It's a thought experiment! Anyway, it doesn't even matter," Lindsay says, waving her hand. "The short answer is 'no,' the medium-length answer is, 'Rory and I will probably never be friends, and I'd be super uncomfortable if I ever had to talk to her in person, but I don't blame her for what Dean did anymore and life is too short to be jealous anyway.'"

"And what's the long answer?" Jess asks, still desperately curious. The implication that she was jealous - that she might be still, that she might have been thinking about him the same way he'd been thinking about her - is quietly thrilling.

"That," Lindsay says with a devastatingly pretty smile, "I'm still working on."

"Fair enough," Jess says. He can't stop himself from smiling back.

* * *

There's actually six of them there for the conference - Matthew had gone out early to meet up with his brother beforehand, and Chris was flying in last minute so he could finish the payroll before the weekend. Wendy and Niles from marketing are there too, but Jess and Niles don't really get along ever since the thing last year with the birthday cake, so they'd opted to fly out separately.

On the first day, Jess has a panel which is supposed to be about character building but which turns out to be more of a Q&A for the college group crammed into the front rows (which ends up being much more fun anyway) and he's booked to do a reading on the second, but other than that his agent - the most efficient person he's ever met who could also pull off sleeve tattoos - had gone easy on him, possibly because he kept joking about bringing Xanax ever since she started talking about it.

It's always kind of a whirlwind, meetings and panels and workshops all day and then bar crawls all night - it's like Comicon for publishing people. Or maybe a more apt comparison would be Burning Man, considering that pot is legal in Oregon now. They all get invited to a _lot_ of hotel room "afterparties."

Jess doesn't partake. Instead he watches Lindsay, who is absolutely in her element: charming everyone around her, smiling her big toothpaste commercial smile and collecting business cards like they're Halloween candies. Every night they stumble back to the hotel together, dragging a backpack full of swag behind them. _Everyone_ gives out swag at these things - most of it useless crap, of course, ugly beer cozies and cheap pens and shit - but in an attempt to be relevant, a lot of companies have started investing in hipper toys. Jess has been handed miniature video games, fake tattoos, flash drives, a water bottle with a tea infuser in it (very small, but hey - better than just a plain water bottle), a miniature typewriter key chain, and a voice recorder with a modulator on it that he's _definitely_ gonna use to prank call Luke.

The galleys, of course, are his favorite part: advanced copies of books from a dozen different writers he likes, and two dozen more from writers he's never heard of, but who sounded interesting enough on the panels and interviews that he wants to give them a shot. Everything moves so fast, in this line of work, he can never get over it: one day you can be nothing, nobody, just a dumbass kid who thinks he's got something to say - and the next, the entire world is listening. It really is something else.

Is he jealous of the people who can write better than he can, who come right out of the gate swinging, ten years younger and twice as much acclaim? Of course. But Jess likes to take these things as a challenge: he's got a lot of years ahead of him to get better. No writer's body of work should be judged on just one piece, and it's better to be honest than perfect, in his opinion. Like a garden, he thinks sometimes: one season you work on this, one season you work on that. It's a living thing - real time engagement with the world. A conversation, not a speech.

"Anyway that's what I meant to say, but what I actually said ended up sounding much more hippie-ish," Jess explains to a giggling Lindsay, who has been enjoying the hell out of Jess' minibar. (Only after he'd promised her he was paying the bill, though, and not expensing it to the company.)

"I got video," she says. "You sounded very smart and not at all like a hippie. Don't worry."

"Double El," Jess pleads, "please don't put me on Twitter."

"I'm _so_ gonna put you on Twitter."

"Put him on Twitter, LL Cool J," Matt calls drunkenly from the second twin bed. "It's what he deserves. The people _know what they want!_ The people _demand_ Jess Mariano's face on Twitter!"

"I'm gonna dunk both your phones in this vodka," Jess threatens, at which point the evening devolves into a spiral of name calling and shittalking.

Bruised, hungover, and more than a little punch drunk, the who's who of Truncheon fly home about a hundred pounds heavier (books - like they need any more). Jess, however, would never forgive himself if he stepped foot on the West Coast and didn't stop by the homestead in Venice Beach, so he bids them safe travels from behind a pair of Harper Collins sunglasses at the airport.

"Here, this is for your mom," Matthew says, shoving a Toblerone into his hands that he's clearly just bought at the newsagent stand next to security. "Tell her I think about her day and night, and anytime she wants a break from your old man I am ready and waiting in the wings."

"You're disgusting, get away from me," Jess says, shoving the chocolate in his backpack nonetheless. "Christopher, make sure he doesn't sit next to Lindsay. Have the flight attendants intervene if you have to."

Chris barely even looks up from his phone. "Huh? Did someone say my name?"

"No," Lindsay says sternly, elbowing Matt out of the way. Having long gotten over the snafu about his expenses, Matt grins at her like a moron, goofily wagging his eyebrows at Jess over her shoulder. Jess sighs inwardly, and pretends he wasn't looking. "Tell Lily hi for me, why don't you?"

"Tell her yourself, you talk to her more than me," Jess complains, opening his arms reluctantly for the hug she's clearly getting ready to bestow. The first full-body contact he gets with her and of course Chris and Matt are two feet away, making faces at him from a pair of plastic chairs. "Thanks for coming with us. I think you managed to make us look respectable."

Lindsay looks oddly touched when she pulls away, her expression sort of knowing, like she knows what he was actually thinking about saying. The moment feels much heavier than it should - he's only staying in California for two nights, after all - but Jess can't bring himself to feel embarrassed. "It was amazing," she says genuinely.

"I'm glad you liked it." Jess clears his throat, looking over at Chris and Matt, who suddenly find something very interesting to look at on the other side of the terminal. The best he's gonna get: Jess pulls her a few more steps away, loosely holding her wrist. The skin of his palm feels warm long after he's released her. "Look. Uh." She blinks up at him with her big blue eyes, smiling encouragingly, and Jess feels sixteen again, sticking his hands in his pockets so he doesn't fidget, schooling his face so the nervousness doesn't show. "I had fun, too. Usually I don't, at these things."

"You got to meet Karen Joy Fowler again," Lindsay says, nudging him. "She said she liked your second book!"

"Yeah," Jess says, who had barely even thought about that conversation since it'd happened, if he was being honest. It had, quite simply, paled in comparison. "But it was mostly just you being there. That's what I'm trying to say."

"Oh," Lindsay says, her face growing serious. She seems suddenly nervous too, her hands clenching around her purse, which is endearing and comforting, all at once. "Thank you. I really...wanted to be here. With you."

"When I get back," Jess says, a little lightheaded, thinking about what Chris had said: _you have to be brave enough to ask._ "Would you like to have dinner with me? Somewhere outside of the office, where we won't talk about work. Like at all."

"At night?" Lindsay asks, a growing smile on her face. "After hours? One on one, in a casual setting?"

"Not casual," Jess says. "I was thinking you could wear a dress." He reaches up and touches the sharp angle of her chin, and her eyelashes actually _flutter,_ which is just the most amazing thing. "And I could wear a tie."

"You've never seen me in a dress," Lindsay says, and her voice sounds a little different than normal. Throatier.

"No," Jess says, hearing his own voice drop in register to match hers, "but I've thought about it."

The moment stretches out for ages, the airport sounds swirling together into a meaningless background racket, like a bass line you stop paying attention to in a rock song. Jess slowly lowers his hand, and watches Lindsay watch him, holding his breath at the little twitches in her expression, the natural expressiveness that makes her so engaging.

She's not his type at all. But maybe Jess doesn't know his own type. He's starting to think that he's had it all wrong, all along.

"Okay," Lindsay says, pressing her lips together in-between the words, like she's trying to keep her smile under control. To his amusement, though, she seems to be failing. "Let's have dinner."

"Alright. It's a date."

"Yes," Lindsay says, reaching out to adjust the Peanut button, still pinned to his jacket. "Have fun with your family, okay? Text me when you land."

"Sure," Jess says agreeably, too amused and charmed to care that Chris and Matt are definitely eavesdropping again, having turned back at some point and inched back over. "They're gonna give you shit the whole flight back, by the way. I'm very sorry."

"Better to be honest than perfect," Lindsay chirps, with one last smile and a happy shrug. Jess thinks about that smile for hours, after the fact.

* * *

Sasha has cancer, which is not something Jess likes to think about at all, preferably ever, but it is an inevitable fact: she has cancer, which means she's very sick. She's still young, and very healthy, and the prognosis is optimistic, but she fucking has cancer, and Jess doesn't know what to do with all the things that makes him feel. So it's a work in progress, is what he's saying.

"Look at my new wig!" she says cheerfully, yanking him over the stoop and hugging him right there, in front of the entire street. Jess takes a deep breath, and hugs her back. "Lily picked it out for me, she says I look like Marilyn Monroe. God, it's good to see you, kid."

"I love it, Sash," Jess says, pulling himself free. "What does Dad think?"

"He thinks I'm sexy all the time," Sasha says with a shrug. "His opinion never changes. You must be hungry - you want some spaghetti?"

"I would _love_ some spaghetti," Jess says honestly, and drops his bag right there on the floor.

He could've lived here forever, if he thought it was good for him: their messy, patchwork house, with Sasha's half-finished knitting projects and Lily's books crammed into every available corner. The garage door is always open, and when Jess lived here, Jimmy was always out there banging around on something - a car, or a motorcycle, or a lawn mower - and he'd come stomping in through the kitchen, smelling like motor oil and rambling excitedly with bright eyes about whatever it was he'd been stewing about out there, all on his own. With Jess in the mix to ground them, the three of them seemed to settle into a happy orbit: Sasha the bright center, Jimmy the bouncing asteroid, and beneath them both was Lily - hiding under the table, serenely flipping pages as her parents shot one-liners at each other above her head. It was the kind of house Jess used to dream about when he was little: messy and weird, but full of voices who loved each other. Just full, period: no empty spaces or dark bedrooms. The lights always on and the doors always wide open.

He worries about Lily sometimes, that she might grow stagnant, but he can't blame her for wanting to be around her mom all the time - especially now, when they might lose her. Jess can't imagine any sort of disease strong enough to kill Sasha, but the possibility exists nonetheless, no matter how much energy she has or how hopeful her doctors are, so - well, he gets it.

She tugs him inside, pushing him back and forth, feeding him spaghetti and bombarding him with questions about AWP. Jess happily lets himself be bullied until Jimmy gets home, at which point the process starts all over again - with Lily creeping in behind him, waiting her turn as well.

"Look at him, is he skinnier?" Jimmy asks. "God listen to me, I sound like a grandpa. Sash, he is skinnier though, right? Am I imagining things?"

"I just fed him two pounds of spaghetti, so that won't last long," Sasha says.

"I'm not skinnier, I'm just hungover," Jess says, nudging Jimmy's arms away. He laughs and tugs Jess right back into them, a rough hug that is equal parts fond and chastising - like Jimmy always is, whenever Jess sees him. Like he's scolding Jess for not being there all the time, to be hugged on a regular basis. "And look at you, Rambo, what's with the guns?"

"We're all eating healthy," Jimmy says proudly, flexing a bicep. "No more free hot dogs for lunch. Lily's got us all on weird vegetables."

"Quinoa is a grain, Dad," Lily says. "Jess, they have weights. In the basement. I think it's a sex thing."

"It's not a sex thing!" Sasha says. "I have cervical cancer! Nobody's getting busy down there lately except my doctors."

"Jesus," Jess says, wincing. Lily makes a gagging noise.

"Nah, she's joking," Jimmy assures them, with a shit-eating grin. "I still get busy down there all the time, guys. Don't worry."

"So glad I came to visit," Jess says loudly, over the sound of Sasha's pealing laughter, and Lily's continued gagging, "always a pleasure to visit the local zoo."

"He says that like he's not related to us," Jimmy says. "I got some things to break to you about genetics, son."

"Christ," Jess says, only halfway joking.

* * *

The mood is happy, but in a determined way, because of course they need Sasha to keep her shit together, and thus everyone _else_ is required to keep their shit together. Jess has sat up many nights on the phone with Lily, listening to her cry and hating it, so he knows it's a deliberate thing. If his dad is having similar breakdowns, at least he's doing it with his therapist and not with his kids - an improvement, Jess has to say.

To move back, to take time off and uproot his life, would be admitting something, so Jess hasn't. Plus, the doom and gloom shit feels defeatist - as Sasha keeps saying to them, her cervix is stronger than the average bear. Or some other animal metaphor too crass for the dinner table.

"I met someone," he tells her, the next morning over coffee (herbal tea, for her), before Jimmy and Lily emerge from their caves. Sasha gasps and covers her mouth, and then tears up, because she's quite possibly the only one who gets what a big deal it is that Jess is actually saying that at all. "At work. Her name is Lindsay."

"Oh, kiddo," Sasha says, and leans her forehead against his shoulder. They're leaning against the kitchen counter, watching the sun rise through the bay windows. The only thing Jess really _likes _about Venice Beach is how beautiful the light is, all the time - so clean, every day, like a knife's edge. "Lily said something, but you know how she gets ahead of herself."

"You would really like her," Jess says. He thinks again about the two airports - the first one, when they'd traded war stories over espresso beans, and the second - the little tremble in her chin as she touched the button on his jacket. "She's...I don't even know how to describe her job. She sort of does everything - PR, marketing, office management, HR." They'd finally managed to fire Walter. "We went to high school together in Stars Hollow." That's all he's gonna say - to anybody, for the time being. He's already decided.

"Oh really?" Sasha squeezes his arm. "What's she like? Tell me the real stuff."

"She's...sharper than she looks," Jess says. "She likes to fool people - make them think she's a pushover, almost, and then she whacks them over the head with their own assumptions. She's beautiful," he sees Sasha tear up again, "blonde hair, legs that go on forever. Big blue eyes. She has a dog. And she's really _kind._ Considerate." He stops for a second to really think about it, to pare it down in his head to what will really articulate Lindsay out loud, to someone who's never met her. "She's one of the toughest people I've ever met, but she's not _hard._ Does that make sense?"

"Perfectly," Sasha says, taking a sip of tea. "Will we meet her?"

"Yes," Jess says, thinking about the future - near and far. "Yes, I think you will."

"Good." She sets the mug down on the counter with a firm click. "We'll wait to tell your dad, I think, until after you leave for the airport. Otherwise he'll spend all day badgering you about grandkids."

"I appreciate that," Jess says, laughing through his nose. "I'm glad I came. Sorry I can't stay longer."

"We'll see you for Christmas," Sasha says, waving her hand. They've been doing that lately, and it sort of helps: making promises. "I hope you're ready for the Kayler-Mariano East coast invasion."

"Like the Beatles, but sexier?" Jess asks, nudging her arm. "Can't wait. Get ready to sleep on my terrible futon."

"Can't wait," Sasha repeats, doing a little jig against the counter. Her wig flops around a little dangerously, but she doesn't seem to even notice.

* * *

Jess writes a poem with Lily, later that morning, and they tear it up and toss it into the ocean, as is their ritual. She's got an old copy of one of his books under her arm, and he tries to toss that in too, but she shrieks at him and kicks sand in his face until he stops.

"This is gonna be worth money one day," she promises, flopping down beside him. Her thick black hair barely even moves, stiff with hairspray and sea salt as it always is. "So you told Mom."

"I told your Mom."

"So it's happening," Lily continues.

"It's all happening," Jess agrees, closing his eyes briefly and turning his face into the wind. "Do you like her? Tell me the truth. I know you've been talking for weeks now."

"I do. I think she's sort of wicked, in the perfect way," Lily says. "Like an evil stepsister - that's who she reminds me of. The snooty rival in the movie. I love it."

"She's not snooty," Jess defends.

"No, but she has the _attitude._ You know what I mean? Sort of devious. She'll be good for you," Lily declares.

"You think so?"

"April thinks so too."

"You told _April_?"

"She's my evil twin, of course I told her," Lily says with a shrug. Jess snorts. "What are you gonna do about Luke and Lorelai?" _And Rory,_ says the look on her face.

"Nothing," Jess says, which is not actually a cop out. "You know what I figured out recently? This is sort of monumental - sit up and listen to me."

Lily obediently pulls herself into a cross-legged position, shoving his novel beneath her knee for safekeeping.

"I think," Jess says, "that you have to draw a line with people. You take a look at where they're standing, and where you're standing, and you say, 'this is as far as I'll go. You meet me here, or you get nothing.' And that's what I'm gonna do about Luke and Lorelai."

"Draw the line?" Lily asks.

"Draw the line," Jess repeats, reaching out and demonstrating in the dirty sand with one of his boots. "They love me, I love them. We all know that. But I can't live with them every day, the way I do with you guys. You know what I mean?" Lily nods. "I don't know what it means. It's not their fault, it's not mine. Maybe it's because of Rory, or maybe it's my mom - who the fuck knows, I don't. But there's me," Jess digs a little crevice with his heel, "and there's this life I have, that I've fought for, and then there's my family, with their own blood sweat and tears over here." Jess pushes it all together in a big, sandy hump, feeling the grit working its way up beneath the cuffs of his jeans. "And maybe that's just the way it turned out - with this space in-between. Maybe we could make it work if we tried harder, but most days I just don't have time, and I know they don't either. Sometimes that's just the way it is."

Lily reaches out and raps her knuckles against his forearm, like she's knocking on a door. "You're pretty smart, you know that?"

"Nah, I'm a dumbass."

"_I'm_ a dumbass. _You're_ the smart one," Lily says with a laugh. "You know you've always got me. Us, I mean. And you'll always have Doula and Liz, too. And Luke and Lorelai will meet you halfway - you know they will."

"Yeah," Jess says. It goes without saying that Rory probably won't - but that's fine. They don't owe each other anything anymore. She's got her own life - her own daughter, a future that's been separate from Jess for a long time now. Whatever wistful feelings he still had are simply that: wistful feelings, what-ifs that had stopped breaking his heart years ago.

It's not supposed to be easy. Jess has been thinking a lot about what Lindsay said about his writing - that it was about love, that he understood how happy endings can sometimes hurt. Maybe that's the secret of getting by: making peace with the things that can't be perfect.

"You're not a dumbass," he says after a minute.

"Yes I am," Lily says, with a mournful sigh. "Maggie's straight."

"You're fucking _kidding_ me!"

"I saw her making out with the guy who busks down at the northeast bend," Lily continues, turning her sad eyes upon Jess. "It was disgusting. He plays the _mandolin_, Jess."

"Where is this motherfucker? I'm gonna beat him up," Jess says.

"I appreciate the thought, but no."

"Seriously, I'm gonna hit him."

Lily's laughing, shaking her head back and forth so earnestly her earrings slap against the sides of her face. "If anyone's gonna hit him, it's me, and I'm not gonna hit anybody, so that's the end of this conversation."

"You _should_ hit him," Jess urges. "It would make you feel better."

"Really? Okay," Lily says. "I'll think about it."

* * *

A date with a pretty girl, and a new book: Jess is feeling alright about leaving, hopeful even, with how much color there is in Sasha's smiling face. He texts Matt and Chris from the airport: _i gave sasha the chocolate like you told me to and now she's talking about taking out a restraining order,_ but actually calls Lindsay, wanting to hear her voice, feeling sort of stupid and sappy but not caring too much, one way or the other.

"Hi!" Lindsay says, sounding impossibly excited to hear from him, as if it's been weeks instead of forty-eight-ish hours. "Are you at the airport?"

"Yes, I hate it," Jess says, dodging a family with a double-wide stroller, which is so ridiculously huge it can't be legal to fly with. "LAX, I mean, not seeing my family. Who are doing fine, by the way. Lily says hi."

"I can't _believe_ Maggie's straight," Lindsay says, earnestly dismayed. "I really thought she was flirting back!"

"She could've been. Lily was taking ages to make a move - maybe she likes both, and she's trying to make her jealous or something."

"Possible," Lindsay says crisply, "but either way, I don't think Lily's on board anymore."

Jess shakes his head, smiling up at the arrival board. "She was just passing the time, I think."

"Yeah, she'll bounce back," Lindsay agrees. "She was texting me earlier about your novel - she wants me to convince you to put the epilogue back in."

Jess groans out loud.

"I sort of agree with her though! I know, you think epilogues are cheesy, I know."

"You always want too much closure," Jess teases. "It's all that sci-fi you read. Sequels everywhere."

"Yeah, well, you literary types could stand to learn a thing or two," Lindsay replies. "Because you know who likes epilogues, and closure, and actual endings of stories? Readers. And you know who buys your books?"

"My sisters?" Jess guesses.

"_Readers,_" Lindsay says with a laugh. "We can argue about it when you're home though. Are you through security yet?"

"No," Jess says, laughing already at the frustrated noise she makes. "I have plenty of time!"

"No you don't! Hang up and go through security," Lindsay says, but she still sounds too happy to be stern. "Call me back when you're at your gate."

"Alright." Jess hitches his bag a little higher on his shoulder, looking again up at the arrival board. His flight is still there, still on time. The little 'PHL - ON TIME' scroll is oddly reassuring. "This is maybe weird to say, but I've had a lot of really earnest, family conversations the last day and a half, so you'll have to forgive me - "

"Okay, weirdo," Lindsay says, still laughing, "you're forgiven. Go ahead."

"I miss you," Jess says.

"Oh, I miss you too," Lindsay says, like it's easy. Jess shakes his head at himself, because it is. Of course it is. "Do you want me to pick you up at the airport, or is that too much?"

"I would love for you to pick me up at the airport," Jess says. "Like a fucking movie? Jesus. Picking me up at the airport - that's ridiculous."

"I'll bring you some cookies," Lindsay promises. "I'm testing a new recipe."

"Please, Lindsay, I'm in public. No sex talk."

"_You're_ ridiculous," Lindsay says happily, and hangs up on him. She's probably smart to do that - the sort of mood he's in, he would've kept her on the phone forever.

Jess slides his phone into his pocket, grinning about nothing, like some kind of sappy idiot, and thinks about happy endings. One or two are overdue, maybe. Sometimes they just drop right out of the sky, don't they? Like fucking magic.

It's something else, he thinks, and angles himself towards the line. Yeah, he's feeling alright.


	2. Make it Make Sense

About six weeks into his latest shot at being a boyfriend, Lindsay gets in a car accident. She calls him from the ER, babbling a little and clearly in pain, not making a whole lot of sense. Jess experiences what he's sure must be a miniature heart attack before he convinces her to put a nurse on the line instead, and is informed of her condition by someone with an extremely comforting, bullshit-free bedside manner.

"A concussion," Jess says, on speaker with Matt as he runs as many red lights as he dares on his way to the hospital. "Two 'lacerations' on her face, but they don't need stitches so I'm assuming they're not that serious - and she sprained her wrist. But nothing life threatening, and they're not keeping her overnight, provided she goes home with somebody who will stay with her."

"Jesus," Matthew says, blowing out a tense breath that fills the line briefly with static. "Well. Guess I'm cancelling my date tonight."

Jess barks out a laugh. "Don't try and cheer me up."

"What do you mean? She's obviously going to want me there in her time of need," Matt continues, "it's the least I can do. Do you think she'll want a massage?"

"Fuck you," Jess says, laughing a little despite himself. "Listen, can you tell Chris? And don't let it spread around the office yet."

"Of course," Matt replies, instantly letting the humor drop. He is, despite his tendency of acting like a vulgar asshole, a stand up guy, and excellent in a crisis. Chris would've just freaked out and made Jess feel worse, if he'd called him instead. "I'll cover for her with Martina today."

"I don't know if she has anything important on her schedule this week," Jess says, "she probably had her planner with her in the car - fuck. Maybe check her computer? I do know she was going to call Abigail King to finalize the flights for her tour, somebody needs to do that. And check her email, too, she kept saying she was waiting to hear back on the background check for the new hire - "

"Jess, man," Matt interrupts, "I got it. We'll take care of it. Get off the phone and drive."

Jess squeezes the steering wheel, flexing his arms and then releasing the tension slowly, letting the anxiety swell and then release, like a wave breaking against the shore. It helps, a little. "Yeah, okay."

"Text us when you see her. And call her parents," Matt adds. "Wait - does she get along with her parents?"

"Eh," Jess says.

"You should wait to let her do it, then," Matt says. "Call your sister instead."

"Better idea," Jess says.

Lindsay seems more like herself when Jess arrives, sitting up in a hospital bed, her eye makeup smudged from tears but otherwise dry-eyed. Her face crumples a little when she sees him in the doorway, but beyond a few sniffles and an extra-clingy hug, she doesn't lose her composure. Atta girl, Jess thinks.

"The guy in the other car, the doctor told me he was okay too," Lindsay tells him, "he lost control as we were turning and slammed right into me. Thank God nobody was sitting in the passenger seat."

"He just - hit you? How do you just lose control like that, out of nowhere?"

"The cop who was in the ambulance with me said it looked like something was wrong with his truck," Lindsay explains, and Jess has to sit down for a second, feeling a little lightheaded. Ambulance. Jesus. "It was right as I was getting off I-76, the Washington Street exit. I was in the left hand turning lane, and he was right next to me in the right hand one, making the same turn. I didn't even have time to react; he hit the side of my car and sort of pushed me sideways - I slammed right into the street light right there on the edge of the sidewalk. There wasn't anybody standing there, either - God, I don't know what I would've done if I'd hurt somebody."

"You didn't," Jess says, reaching up to smooth her hair away from her cheek. The cuts on her face are ugly and swollen, but they don't look very deep. She's got smaller cuts on her hands too, but they're more like scratches. The driver's side window shattered on impact, the nurse had told him on the phone. She was lucky she'd been wearing long sleeves - just lucky all around, really. It could've been much worse. "Did they give you something for pain?"

"Yeah, but just ibuprofen," Lindsay says with a grimace. Her wrist is already encased in a brace, and she's holding it carefully against her chest, wincing every time she has to move it. "He said I should just start with that, and if it really gets to be too much, my GP can write me a prescription for something else. But I got the impression he didn't think I needed it."

"Bullshit," Jess mutters. He wants to keep touching her, has this urge to wrap his arms around her and just smother her until his heart stops beating so fast, but she looks so banged up and tired he's afraid he'll just hurt her worse. "Gimme twenty minutes, I've got like eight different people in my phone I can call. A hundred bucks and you're set."

Lindsay sputters a little as she laughs. "Keep your voice down, tough guy, there's like three cops standing right outside."

"Whatever, I bet they've got twice as many in their phones," Jess says, reaching up to touch her face again, unable to stop himself. She leans into his palm, her eyes fluttering shut, and gives a shuddery sigh. "What do you need me to do? Who should I call first?"

"Nobody," Lindsay says. She frowns. "Wait - did you call work?"

"Yeah, Matt's taking care of everything. Don't worry."

"I'm supposed to call Abigail King! And I had like a million emails to return - "

"Quit it," Jess says, squeezing her uninjured hand. "It's okay, someone will do it. Do you need me to call your parents?"

Lindsay pauses, thinking about it for a long moment. "No. My mom will just freak out on you. I'll call them in a few days."

"Okay," Jess says, taking it at face value. "What do you need from your apartment? Give me a list and I can have Matt or Chris stop by and meet us at my place."

"Oh God, you don't have to go to any trouble for me," Lindsay says plaintively, "it's enough to just let me stay with you, Jess, really - "

"Quit it," Jess says again, and leans in for a kiss. Lindsay sighs a little against his mouth, a little puff of air, and there's the faintly metallic taste of blood from where she'd bitten through her lip. His heart twists as he pulls away. "You'll be doing me a favor. I'll be up all night pacing otherwise."

"Sorry I scared you," she says softly.

"It wasn't your fault."

"I'm still sorry," she says, "if for no other reason than the fact that Peanut is probably going to piss on everything you own in the next three days."

Jess snorts. "And just last week you were bragging about how well he did in those obedience classes you took him to when he was a puppy."

"He pees when he's stressed," Lindsay explains apologetically. "Also when he's in new places. Like until he gets used to it - think of it as him claiming his new territory, maybe."

"Oh, can't wait," Jess says.

* * *

They've been taking it slow, which is a new concept for Jess. He's spent the night at her place a few times, here and there, when he was too drunk to drive home, but for the most part it's all been very high school: holding hands at lunch, going out to the movies on Fridays, hello and goodbye kisses in the hallways. Sex doesn't feel like an urgent thing they need to rush into - rather it feels more like a pleasant inevitability, a thing for Jess to feel quietly excited about. When he thinks about it - about her - it's with a sense of warm anticipation, instead of the frenzied impatience he's used to.

The closest they came was after a book launch in Brooklyn, late at night on the train back into Manhattan. She'd been wearing this amazing dress, her legs and shoulders bare, her hair loose around her shoulders. It was growing long, and the ends of it would brush against his forearm as she leaned against his shoulder in the seat. They missed their stop the first time because they could barely keep their hands off each other - they had to switch trains and backtrack, and then they missed it again because Lindsay had decided that her seat was no good, she'd rather sit on his lap, thank you very much, and Jess' entire brain skipped and ran off the track, not to be heard from again until an hour later when they finally stumbled back to their hotel, punch-drunk and half-drenched from the rainstorm that caught up to them halfway down 55th Street. By the time they got up to their room, the mood was gone - instead, they stayed up all night watching shitty action movies on HBO and working their way through a bag of Jolly Ranchers Lindsay bought from the desk in the lobby. To this day, it's still the best date Jess has ever had.

Still, he isn't half as excited about having sex with her as he is about sleeping in the same bed with her, which is probably a sign of extremely sappy feelings also - the few times they've shared a bed, it hit him somewhere deep to roll over and see her lying there, curled around a pillow or reaching out sleepily to take his hand. When he catches himself spacing out, thinking about it - he's not thinking about her naked, he's thinking about what her pajamas look like. He pictures her brushing her teeth at his bathroom sink, sitting next to him with her phone as he reads at night - bumming around his apartment on Sunday mornings in her sweatpants. It's all terribly mushy; Jess is sort of embarrassed of himself, honestly.

This is not exactly what he'd pictured; Lindsay isn't allowed to sleep through the night, and Jess feels like a piece of shit shaking her awake every two hours. By the time the sun breaks through the smog, he's exhausted and she's grumpy, and Peanut has indeed pissed all over the apartment.

She's obviously still in pain, wincing every time the sunlight hits her face, and when Peanut barks suddenly at a bird that's landed on the windowsill, she makes an audible sound of distress, curling into herself at the kitchen table. Jess bullies her back into bed, makes her take more Advil and calls his sister.

"Jesus, is she okay?" Lily asks, sounding alarmed and half-asleep still.

"Just a concussion," Jess says, trying to keep his voice down. The balcony off the living room is the reason his apartment is a tad overpriced, but it's worth it in the winter, not to have to walk all the way downstairs to smoke. Peanut's curled up against his feet, unbothered by the cigarette smoke, but Jess still tries to exhale into the wind, his head angled in the opposite direction. "I was more freaked out than she was, I think. She sprained her wrist, too, and they wouldn't give her any actual pain meds, so she's pretty miserable right now."

"Jesus," Lily says again. "That's so scary. Do you remember the wreck Dad got into that one time, when you were living with us?"

"Sort of," Jess says. He frowns, trying to remember. He'd been sort of a shithead when he lived in California - scorched and bruised from Stars Hollow, unused to people who actually wanted him around, it'd taken him almost a year to allow himself to settle into it. "Not when he totaled the Explorer...?"

"No, that was later," Lily says, "when he got his license taken away."

"Right," Jess says. Jimmy is a notoriously reckless driver. Jess is honestly surprised the government gave him back a license at all. "He didn't get hurt, did he?"

"No, but the cops called us right after it happened, and we didn't know if he was okay until we got to the hospital," Lily says. "You missed that part - you were out with your friends, or something. You met us at the ER."

Jess remembers it vaguely. He'd been dating this older girl at the time - mostly because she had a car, and a liberal definition of "third base" - not to mention good hookups and plenty of cash to spare. He'd been pretty fucked up when he got to the hospital, in more than one sense of the phrase. "I remember him bitching about the car the whole time. Your mom was sitting there crying, and he wouldn't shut up about his stupid bumper."

"It's his way of deflecting," Lily says fondly. She always sounds fond when she talks about their dad - all of the things that used to hurt Jess' feelings seem like fun quirks to her, somehow. "How's Lindsay's, by the way?"

"Totaled," Jess says. "Honestly that's probably part of why she's so upset. She's had that shitty thing for almost ten years."

"Oh yeah - you kept trying to convince her to get a new one, right? The alignment was off or something."

"Everything was off," Jess says. The A/C didn't work, the bumper was rusted through. There were three different sensors that needed replacing, and the fuel efficiency was so low Jess had been convinced there was something wrong with her engine. She'd been refusing to take it in to a mechanic for weeks, with the air of someone putting off a bad answer they didn't want to hear. "She loved it, though. She bought it right after her divorce - you know how it is."

"Yeah," Lily says sadly. "Cars are important. They carry us place to place."

"That's a nice way of putting it."

"But now you can help her find a new one," Lily says cheerfully. "Car shopping's fun."

"I was planning on letting her mourn for a little bit first," Jess says. He already feels calmer, having talked to Lily. The low-grade panic that had sort of wedged its way into the space behind his throat now feels more like exhaustion. "I'll tell her you said 'hi.'"

"Yeah, and also tell her that Mom and I are gonna send her some tea," Lily insists. "We found this shop that carries a bunch of different herbal blends and there's like two or three of them that have really been helping her with the nausea and headaches and stuff."

Jess crushes his cigarette in the ashtray, reaching down to scratch at Peanut's ears absently. The dog whines a little when he stops, hitching his head up higher against Jess' knee. "That's really nice of you - you don't have to."

"I want to," Lily says. "Mom will want to, too. She's been meaning to call you back, by the way - but she's been feeling pretty sick the last few days."

Jess swallows hard. "Don't worry about it - tell her to take her time. It wasn't a big deal anyway, I just wanted to catch up."

"Okay." Lily sighs forlornly. "I wish we lived around the corner from you. Then we could come over and fuss over you guys in person."

"Move to Philly, then. The weather's great," Jess says dryly, squinting up at the mud-grey sky.

"Dream on," Lily says. She pauses for a short moment. "Hey. Take a breath, Jess. She's alright."

"Yeah, okay." Jess does so. The cigarette had helped too, but this is better.

"Good," Lily says warmly, after another longer moment. "Love you."

"Love you back," Jess says grudgingly, still feeling weird about it, even after years of training himself to say it. He can hear Lily laughing at him as he hangs up.

In the dark bedroom, Jess can only just make out the shape of Lindsay's body in the bed, so he uses the light of his phone to navigate, not wanting to accidentally bump her wrist. Peanut shuffles his way into the bed along with him, circling around a few times at the foot before flopping down a little too hard, ignoring completely Jess' irritated whisper to get down.

"Leave it," Lindsay mumbles, rolling over in the dark. "He's as stubborn as you are."

Jess presses his leg against hers tentatively, and she sighs, rolling closer and pressing her cheek against his arm. Her wrist brace is wedged somewhat awkwardly between his arm and her chest, and Jess reaches down to gently tap her cheek, nudging her in the other direction. "Your wrist, baby - turn over."

She grumbles a little, but rolls over, grabbing a pillow and propping up her wrist carefully. "My whole body hurts," she says, with a quiet groan as she settles her head carefully against the crook of his elbow.

"I know," Jess says, sliding his other arm around her waist. The room is cool, a breeze running through from the open window, but her skin is flushed, almost like she's feverish. Jess presses his forehead against the back of her neck and tries not to overthink it. "Try to sleep some more. When you wake up you'll feel better."

"I'm gonna hold you to that," Lindsay mumbles.

Jess flexes his arm against her stomach, in the soft spot beneath her breasts where she's extremely ticklish. He's rewarded with a quiet laugh. "Feel free to hold me to anything you like."

"'Kay," she says, a smile still in her voice. Behind the curtains, the sun is finally breaking through the morning gloom, casting long beams of light on the foot of the bed. "Hey - you're a good boyfriend."

"Thanks," Jess says. "I've been trying."

"Your curtains are really ugly though," she observes.

"Go to sleep," Jess says.

* * *

Jess has an interview with Poets & Writers the next day, which he does over the phone while walking Peanut around the neighborhood - a surprisingly calming task, as it turns out. Normally he gets all twitchy when he has to do this sort of thing, but wrestling the dog away from trash cans and keeping him from tangling up his leash on lamp poles as he answers the reporter's questions turns out to be just the trick.

"I could take him with me on the tour," Jess says, dutifully wiping off the dog's feet by the front door as Lindsay fondly watches from the kitchen. "You know, at those talks they're making me do - I could eat up like half the time just by introducing him. People always lose their shit over dogs - it's foolproof."

"Don't pretend like you're not excited," Lindsay chastises. "You get to go hang out with other cool, smart literary people, and talk about writing all day. You can't wait."

"I hang out with cool, smart literary people all the time. It's literally my job."

"It's different and you know it," Lindsay replies. She's making some kind of soup, and Jess leans over her shoulder to look. The color is a somewhat off-putting reddish orange, but it smells fucking incredible. "It's almost done. Just needs to simmer for a little bit longer."

"I'm not telling you to stop cooking or anything," Jess says, wrapping an arm around her waist, "but you don't have to cook for me. Like as a 'thank you,' or whatever. I feel like I should say that for the record."

"I'm not. I just like it," Lindsay says. She beams. "I used to be really bad at it. It was sort of a thing, when I was with Dean. My mom would try to teach me, and then I'd go home and fuck it up, and he'd pretend like he wasn't annoyed, and I'd feel bad and guilty and gross, and then the next day we'd do it all over again."

The more Lindsay spills about her marriage, the more it sounds like stories from another life, a completely different person who barely resembles the one standing in front of him. But then again, Lindsay probably thinks the same thing, when he talks about his time in California. People are capable of so many things. "But you learned eventually."

"Turns out," Lindsay says dryly, "the problem was that I was miserable, not that I didn't know how to cook. Here - try some."

The first bite almost makes Jess' eyes water. "It's spicy," he says in surprise.

"Chipotle potato soup," she says, licking the back of the spoon herself. "There's bell peppers and I'm gonna add cheese at the end, too. Do you like it?"

"Are you kidding? Yes. Holy shit." She laughs. "What do you need me to do - toast bread, set the table, what?"

"I thought we could eat in bed while we finish the rest of The Young Pope," Lindsay says.

"Amazing," Jess says earnestly.

This is where Jess is, when the finished manuscript for Gilmore Girls lands in his inbox: eating spicy soup with Lindsay and her dog as they watch Jude Law deliver a truly batshit monologue while wearing a papal tiara. Jess picks up his phone to look at the notification, and almost drops it.

"What?" Lindsay asks, seeing the look on his face. "Is it work?"

"Uh, yes, sort of," Jess says, and angles the phone screen so she can see. "I told you Rory was writing a book. Didn't I?"

"Yeah." Her expression suddenly subdued, Lindsay pauses the TV and sets her half-empty bowl aside. She doesn't move to take the phone, though. "Is she sending it to you because she wants your opinion, or does she want Truncheon to publish it?"

"Both," Jess says with a grimace. About a year ago, right before Lindsay started at the office, he'd met Rory for drinks at a bar in Manhattan, which was the last time he's seen her in person. She talked mostly about her daughter, but they'd ended the night on her book, which at the time had still only been a rough outline. She'd started writing some of it, but her pregnancy had forced her to put it on hold, and she'd also had some trouble keeping an agent, for reasons she was somewhat vague about. Jess hadn't really wanted to know the full story, since a lot of the names she mentioned were people he knew professionally and it seemed like an awkward middle ground to be in, but Rory is Rory, and he'll always have a soft spot for her, despite everything. So he promised to read it - both as a friend, and as the acquisition editor for Truncheon. "Do you want to read the email?"

She frowns. "Thank you for offering, but no. I trust you."

"I know you do," Jess says. "I mean, you'd have every reason not to, just saying. But that's not why I offered."

"Of course I have reason to trust you, I'm dating you," Lindsay says, her frown deepening. "My history with Rory has nothing to do with you, Jess. Either you believe me when I say it doesn't bother me, or you don't."

Jess sighs, and lets the phone drop between them, in the rustle of blankets between their legs. "I'm not trying to say anything here, Lindsay, and I know you don't want to put me in the middle, but look at your hands right now."

Lindsay looks down, startled, at her clenched fists. She releases them with a tense breath. "Sorry."

"Don't apologize." Jess reaches out and smooths her hair away from her cheek, careful to avoid the cuts, which are still a little swollen. They're taking longer to heal, Jess suspects, because Lindsay has been sleeping on her side, with her injured cheek smushed up against a pillow. "Listen. I know it bothers you, okay? I appreciate that you're trying to be cool about it for my sake, but I can see it bothering you. You don't have to lie."

"I don't want it to bother me!" Lindsay says in frustration. "I don't want to be that kind of girlfriend, okay, like reading your emails and texts because I'm jealous - that's so gross, Jess."

"You're not breaking into my phone while I sleep, Jesus," he says, with an incredulous laugh. "I'm offering because this specific email is from an ex-girlfriend of mine who once did something really fucking hurtful to you. Okay? I want you to read it. Because I don't want to like..." he shakes his head, struggling for words. "It's important to me that we do things the right way. Talk about this kind of stuff. Do you know what I mean?"

Lindsay pinches her bottom lip with two fingers while she thinks, her face creased, shoulders hunched up around her chin defensively. "It just feels weird. Like I understand what you're trying to say, but telling me to read it to make me feel better...it's weird, Jess."

"Okay." Jess nods. "You don't have to read it. I just thought - "

"I know."

"I just want you to know that I understand, that's all. Like if anyone would be justified...it'd be you."

"I'm not going to ask you to stop talking to her, Jess," Lindsay says. She looks a little calmer now, and there's even the hint of a smile lurking at the corner of her mouth. "Like when Emily asked Ross to stop being friends with Rachel? We all know how that storyline ends."

"I wouldn't say that Rory and I are friends," Jess corrects. Lindsay just scoffs a little. "I'm serious, I'm not just saying that to make you feel better. I see her once or twice a year, at most."

"That doesn't mean you're not friends."

"It means something," Jess insists. He hadn't meant to push her to this conversation so quickly, but it has to happen eventually, and he's not a fan of putting off the big shit just because it's uncomfortable. "Can I just be clear about something? I'm not pining away for her. Okay? I have a lot of respect for her, and I care about her, because she was my first real girlfriend and now she's my uncle's stepdaughter, which makes her a pretty big part of my family whether we like it or not. But she's not really part of my life. That's the God's honest truth."

Lindsay smiles gently. "Okay. I believe you, Jess. Thank you."

His shoulders relax, just a little. "Am I being weird about this?"

"I think we're both being weird about a really weird situation, yes," Lindsay concludes. She reaches out and takes one of his hands in both of her own, folding them together on top of her knee. "I really like you a lot, Jess."

"Well, that's a relief," Jess says.

She laughs a little. "I appreciate that you're trying so hard, and that you're taking it so seriously, but really...you can't like, indulge me about this all the time, and I really mean that. She is part of your family, and if we're serious about this…" she shrugs. "I'll just have to get over it. And I want to get over it, Jess. So you can't be bending over backwards, letting me read her emails, reassuring me all the time...it's not gonna help."

"Are you asking me to show you some tough love?"

"I'm asking you to let me handle it on my own," Lindsay says. "Let me manage how I feel about her. I'm not gonna let it interfere with you and me, okay? I'm gonna be a fucking grown up, and handle this with maturity and grace, god damn it. I swear to God I am." She squeezes his hand. "But you're a real sweetheart for offering. Just so you know."

Jess wrinkles his nose. "That's not a word that has ever been applied to me before. Not even by my mother."

"Well, you are a sweetheart," Lindsay says. "I can't believe I'm the first one to have noticed. Maybe nobody's told you because they were afraid you'd make fun of them."

"Well, nobody's ever cooked me spicy soup before," Jess says. "And your shorts are very short. That helps too."

"I knew that would win you over," Lindsay says.

* * *

Rory's book is good, because of course it is. Jess sends it to Chris, who skims the first few chapters and gives his go ahead too. Lindsay still hasn't come back to work - they've all threatened to send her straight back home if she dares to show her face before Monday - and Jess thinks about waiting to make the call, but if she'd meant it about letting her handle it then she'd probably be offended if he did. It's sort of a sign of trust, isn't it, when you take someone at their word? Jess really hopes he's got it right.

"You really don't have to flatter me," Rory tells him, sounding as earnest and cute as she ever does, even with the distinctive sounds of a babbling toddler in the background of the call. "You've got good instincts, and I trust you. If you think there are issues, I want to hear them. Gimme the issues, Jess."

"I told you I'd read it, not edit it," Jess jokes. "I don't get paid to do that plebeian shit anymore. Save your humble brags for your editor."

"I thought you were my editor!"

"Yeah, no," Jess says. He's decided to be blunt, if for no other reason than to get it over with quicker. "Rory, you shouldn't publish this with us. You need a real book deal for this, and a real agent."

"Oh, come on, Jess, it's not - "

"No, quit it," Jess interrupts. "You know it's good. If all you wanted was an ego boost, then here it is: it's good. And you knew it was good when you sent it to me. Don't play games."

Rory sighs reluctantly. "Easy for you to say. Remember when I bragged about how easy it'd be to write a memoir, and how it wouldn't be that different from what I did at The Atlantic? I was an idiot. Just for the record."

"I don't remember any bragging," Jess says. "Maybe a hyperbole or two, some shit-talking here and there. But no bragging."

"I definitely bragged, but thanks," Rory says. "Look, I can't work with Jacqueline anymore, and I'm running out of agents who are willing to humor me. This isn't something I'm trying to get famous off of, Jess - it's just something I want to do. If Truncheon doesn't want it, that's fine, but you don't need to spare my feelings by saying it's like, a favor you're doing me - "

"That's not the issue," Jess interrupts. "Of course we'll publish it. I read it, I liked it - that's all the vetting you need to go through with us. But it's a serious book, Rory. And you're a serious journalist. Do you know what kinds of books we publish?"

"Good ones," Rory insists, kindly. "Novelists and poets who push boundaries, who - who take risks!"

"Oh please," Jess interrupts with a laugh. "The word you're looking for is 'weird,' Rory. You can say it."

Rory huffs, a stubborn sort of sound. "You publish through Truncheon. And you're out there winning awards. I got the ARC for your new one in the mail yesterday, by the way - it looks amazing. I can't wait to read it."

The genuine excitement in her voice makes Jess squirm a little - some weird kind of guilt that is strange to even be feeling. "Thanks," he says, "but I'm sort of the exception, and you know it. At least in terms of what I write."

"I think you're being too hard on yourself."

"I'm not! Listen, I started this company, I know better than you what it is, I think," Jess counters, with another laugh. He hears her laugh too, a frustrated sort of giggle that he remembers from back in the day, when they'd go back and forth for hours, arguing about a novel they disagreed about. "We've carved out this little niche here, with all our post-post-modernists, but Rory - our biggest writer right now is a woman from Seattle who writes merman erotica."

"I've read her stuff," Rory argues. "It's subversive!"

"Yeah, but it's also real fuckin' strange," Jess says. "We don't publish people who write books with mass appeal, and that's why we've been able to survive this long. We don't have even a fraction of the resources that the Big Five do, and we can't compete with them when it comes to scoring writers who are good enough to get a normal book deal. So we narrowed our focus, and made space for people who still deserved to get their voice out there - but who weren't conventional enough - or whatever word you want to use - to go with a bigger name." What Jess doesn't say, mostly because it would be a real douchey thing to acknowledge it out loud, is that his own rising career has also made Truncheon's survival possible. He knows very well that things like the O. Henry prize give the company a veneer of respectability, which gets them a lot further than Jess is comfortable with.

"Are you saying my book's not weird enough for you?" Rory says, with an incredulous laugh.

"No, I'm telling you that you could do better," Jess says bluntly. "You could get a better deal than what we could offer you, if you went the conventional route. Because you're a lot of things, Rory, but 'avant-garde' isn't one of them."

"I think that's a compliment," Rory says, "and if so, I think I'm grateful for the advice. But I wouldn't have sent it to you at all if I weren't hoping that Truncheon would publish it. If all I needed an ego boost, I would talk to my mom, Jess."

"And why us?" Jess challenges. "Is it because you really think we're the best place for this book? This incredibly personal memoir about you and your mother? Or is it because you're too scared to try doing it the regular way?"

Rory falls into a brief silence, broken only by Nori's little voice, rambling in endearing baby talk somewhere below the phone. Jess pictures Rory in that apartment above the diner - it's still strange to picture them living there, but it suits Rory, in a way - sitting at the same window that Jess used to sit at and read. Laptop on her knees, phone to her ear, and her baby at her elbow: the image is easy to conjure.

"You're so good at seeing through my bullshit," she finally says quietly. "You always have been. I keep expecting that you'll fall out of practice."

"It's my job to be good at that," Jess replies. "You're not the exception, trust me."

"Well that's sort of comforting," Rory says, with another frustrated little laugh. "Okay, I hear you. I do. Thank you. Can I take a few days to think about it?"

"Of course."

"And I still want to know the issues," she insists, "whether you publish it or not. I know you found some. That's the other reason I sent it to you."

"Your transitions could use some work," Jess admits. "And you write like a journalist. Which isn't a bad thing, but whatever editor you end up with is going to make you slow it down quite a bit. Take your time with some of the more intense chapters. Fair warning."

"I can live with that," Rory says happily. "If I end up with some fancy book deal, can I put in the extra chapter about you? The story about the swan would make a nice epilogue."

"You do that and I'll write an essay about how many deer you've murdered and get it in the New Yorker," Jess says. "I know a guy. I'll make it a metaphor for something."

"I didn't mean to murder them! For an East Coast driver I have had a perfectly normal number of deer-related car accidents, thank you very much."

The mention of car accidents makes Jess think of Lindsay, who is still at his apartment, white-knuckling it through the last few days of her convalescence. That weird guilt rises up again - this time that he'd started to enjoy talking to Rory again, falling back into the old pattern of back and forth that they never lost their knack for. It's not like he's done anything wrong, or anything that would hurt Lindsay, but...well. It feels different now. "Yeah, well, I appreciate you censoring me out as it is. You didn't have to."

"I censored out all of it," Rory says. "I'm saving my love life for the next memoir. You know - 'Rory Gilmore: The Sequel.' That's where it'll get really sordid."

That hits Jess the wrong way, and he finds himself irritated. It would be an asshole move to take it out on her, though, so he tries to keep it out of his voice. "I assume you'll spare me the experience of editing that one."

"It's only fair," Rory says with a laugh. "How are you, anyway? It's been ages since we've caught up."

"Oh, you know. Enjoying my mid-thirties. The existential crises, plaguing feelings of self-doubt - the usual."

"Well, try doing that with an eighteen-month-old," Rory says with a laugh. "My mom made it look easy."

"Your mom makes everything look easy," Jess points out, with enough fondness that it doesn't sound mean.

"Are you seeing anybody?" Rory asks, somewhat out of the blue. She has a tendency to do that when they talk - ask who he's dating, and how it's going - and she rarely means anything by it. Jess learned the hard way that she really doesn't mean to make a hint - it's just her way of checking up on him. "April mentioned that you were, but you haven't said anything to Luke yet, so I assume it's not serious."

"It's," Jess says, and pauses, at a momentary loss. "It's getting there. We're sort of taking it slow."

"That's nice! She's not another poet, is she?"

He laughs. "No," he says wryly, "no, the opposite of a poet. She's actually not a writer at all - unless you count Truncheon's Twitter account."

"Oh, she works with you?"

"Yeah." Now would be the best time to bring it up, to say it casually so that Rory puts the pieces together on her own. He could say, 'you might have known her, actually - she's from Stars Hollow,' feign ignorance about the Dean connection, and allow Rory the dignity of reacting to it in private. Or he could just come out and say it: 'Rory, her name is Lindsay Lister, and she used to be married to Dean. Weird coincidence, I know, but I swear I didn't do it on purpose.' But he doesn't want to do that, either.

He doesn't want Rory to know at all, he realizes, in the crystallized moment of indecision while she waits for an answer. He wants Rory to remain entirely separate from this part of his life - the universe of Philadelphia, of their rough-around-the-edges office, his crass, lovable friends, the career and community that he's built here, painstakingly and with dozens of false starts. Jess has gotten used to keeping his life separated into compartments: California and his dad's family, Connecticut and his mother's. Philly, by consequence, is its own world too, and Lindsay is a new, precious part of it that he's not really ready to share.

Also, for the same reason that nobody has come out and told Jess who Nori's father is: because it's none of his fucking business. It goes both ways, in this instance. Does Rory really need to know?

"Is that weird?" Rory asks guilelessly. "When your office is so small? I can't imagine dating somebody at the Gazette. And not just because I only have three employees, and two of them are my grandmother's age."

"We're actually a lot bigger now," Jess says. "We've hired a lot more full-time staff recently. So we've avoided a lot of the problems so far. Listen - my mom still doesn't know, and neither does Luke. I'm trying to spare her the full Danes experience until she's deep enough in that she won't dump me on the spot. Do you think you could…"

"Oh yeah, of course," Rory says immediately. "I won't say anything. April's kind of a blabbermouth, though."

She is and she isn't, Jess thinks wryly. She'd made it clear to Rory, for example, that he was off limits, but she still didn't tell Rory who it was that had taken him off the market. The kid is too devious for her own good, sometimes. "I appreciate it."

"Did you really like it?" Rory asks, somehow making the sudden, blatant vulnerability sound charming. It's one of her most annoying and endearing qualities, in Jess' opinion. "Be honest."

"I did, Rory," Jess says. He wouldn't say that he enjoyed reading it, exactly, but his reasons for being uncomfortable had nothing to do with the actual writing, which was approachable and warm, full of the easy humor and careful attention that Rory has always excelled at. She might not have been able to make it long term as a political journalist, but it wasn't because she was a bad writer, that's for certain. "Have you let your mom read it yet?"

"No," Rory says bashfully. "I guess I'm nervous. There's some stuff in there that will embarrass her, I'm sure."

"Show her," Jess says firmly. "Do it right away. Trust me."

"Because it'll help with the nerves?" Rory asks.

"No, because she deserves to read it," Jess says. Certainly she deserved to read it before he did, but what's done is done. "Duh."

"Oh yeah," Rory says with a laugh. "You're probably right, huh?"

"Sometimes, but only on accident," Jess says.

* * *

Jess is, as a boyfriend, a bit of a worrywart. Not overprotective, exactly - although he can be possessive, sometimes, under the right conditions - but overly anxious sometimes. Lindsay indulges it quite a bit more than anyone else he's ever been with - definitely more than Letty, who'd cited it as one of the several dozen reasons she was dumping him. With this car accident thing, Jess figures he's got at least a month to fret as much as he likes, until she starts to get annoyed with him.

well, I'm not seeing double and my memory seems fine, Lindsay texts mid-day, obliging his request to keep him updated on the status of her headache. I don't think your welcome mat's going to make it, though. Peanut got to it again before I noticed.

How many fucking times a day does that damn dog need to piss? Jess is sure it's some sort of medical condition. I am less attached to the welcome mat than I am to your half-tenderized brain, LL.

Lindsay sends him a selfie in response; a picture of her tired, pretty face, creased in an exaggerated frown. Peanut is on her lap, also staring balefully at the camera.

come home soon we're making brownies, is the caption. Jess' heart actually skips a beat.

"You look like you've just been hit by a truck too," Chris comments, stopping by his office on his way out to lunch. "Go home early, why don't you? It's Friday, and your girlfriend just got out of the hospital. Get the fuck outta here."

"I am," Jess says, "I just need to finish up a couple things. Is that for Lindsay?"

Chris nods, carefully placing a Get Well card on the desk, signed and embellished by everyone else in the office. With it is a little package of band-aids with Thomas the Tank Engine on them. "We tried to find car-themed ones, but this was the closest they had at the pharmacy," Chris explains, shaking the box.

"Funny."

"Yeah, we thought so." Plopping down in the opposite chair, Chris clasps his hands together over his knees, considering Jess seriously. "So. Rory Gilmore, huh."

"Yeah." Jess rubs the bridge of his nose. The almost-sleepless night has been on the verge of catching up to him all day. "Lindsay already knows. We talked about it last night."

"That's good, but it wasn't what I was gonna ask," Chris says. "It's not what we normally publish, man."

"I'm aware," Jess says scornfully, "given that I'm the one who chooses what we publish, Christopher. I told her the same exact thing twenty minutes ago. She's going to think about it over the weekend and let us know."

"You tried to talk her out of it?"

"Well yeah," Jess says. "Wouldn't you?"

Chris shrugs, laughing. "Considering the most serious relationship I've ever had is this stupid fuck-buddy thing with Adrian? I have no idea."

"You could have one if you actually wanted one," Jess says lightly, not wanting to make a thing out of it but unable to let the moment pass without saying it. "It's not like you're defective."

"Whatever you say." Chris sighs. "I just...from a business perspective, of course I think it's a good idea. She's good, she's marketable, and she comes from money, obviously, so she'll have resources other authors don't to promote herself - not to mention whatever contacts she's got already as a journalist. Working on her book will be a walk in the park by comparison. But Jess, man…"

"What?"

"She's just gonna twist you up in knots, and then leave again," Chris says bluntly. "It's what she always does. I'm sick of watching it happen, and I really don't want to see you fuck things up for yourself with Lindsay. That's all I wanted to say."

Jess taps a pen against the side of his laptop, considering the weight of his loyalty to Lindsay, against his friendship with Chris. It's a tricky question. "Would you mind shutting the door, Chris?"

Chris raises an eyebrow, but leans back in the chair and pushes the office door shut, closing off the noise from the rest of the floor with a heavy thud.

"This doesn't leave this room and I mean it," Jess says. "You know Lindsay and I went to high school together."

"Yeah," Chris says cautiously.

"Her ex-husband, Dean? The one who cheated on her?" Jess grimaces. "Rory was the person he cheated with. They used to date, in high school - he's actually the guy Rory broke up with so she could date me." Jess laughs a little, at the gobsmacked look on Chris' face. "Yeah. Small towns, dude - I'm telling you."

"You're fucking kidding me," Chris says, leaning forward on his knees again. "Your ex-girlfriend was the one who broke up her marriage? That's fucking nuts."

"I know," Jess says, pained. "So - it's complicated, is what I'm saying. Lindsay and I - we've been talking about it, trying to be, you know, open about everything, but I can't help but - " he pauses, looking at the screen of his laptop, still open to Rory's email. "If we publish her book, she's going to be around a lot. On the phone, emails, doing readings - we'll have to send her on a tour, arrange press for her - everything. She'll be a big deal for us - we'll need to put a lot of resources into her." Jess grimaces. "What kind of shitty fucking boyfriend would I be to make Lindsay deal with that? A really shitty one."

Chris' face is grim. "Did you tell Lindsay you were going to publish the book? Or did you just tell her she emailed you?"

"Both. She insisted that it didn't bother her. But I'm not sure she really thought it all the way through - what it would mean."

"Well," Chris says, "she has a concussion, dude. So."

"Yeah." He shakes his head. "Obviously we all could use the weekend to think it over. But man - it also feels bullshit to turn away a good opportunity - a professional opportunity - for a personal reason. Isn't that inappropriate too? To discriminate against Rory because I want Lindsay to like me?"

"Isn't that what you already did? By trying to talk Rory out of it?" Chris laughs a little. "If you hadn't met Lindsay, would you have done the same thing?"

The bitch of it is, Jess isn't really sure. A year ago, in that bar - he'd thought about it. Making a move. Rory would've been receptive, probably - she was sending him the right signals, flirting just as much as he was. He'd decided against it in the end - convinced he was imagining things, not wanting to go down a path that had burned them both before, wary of opening up a can of worms neither of them were prepared to deal with. But if Lindsay hadn't dropped into his life, not even a month later - would he have kept to that conviction? He honestly doesn't know.

"I care about Lindsay," Jess says firmly, looking Chris in the eye. "I wouldn't have started anything if I wasn't serious about her."

"I know you are," Chris says placatingly, "I know. We can all see it, Jess. It's a good thing that you guys have going. You both deserve it." He shrugs helplessly. "This? This...is a really weird situation, no doubt about it. I think you should talk to what's his name, first of all - Michael, Mitch - "

"The new HR guy?" Jess asks incredulously. "His name is Elijah. Where the hell did you get Michael?"

"Whatever," Chris says, waving his hand. "Talk to him. And then go home and take care of Lindsay. Make her dinner, rub her shoulders, watch bad movies with her. And on Sunday, when her headache's gone, you fucking talk to her about this, and you don't let her brush it off again. Because if you wanna make it last, then you have to figure the Rory thing out now. That's not something you can put off, man. Not even a little bit."

He's right. Jess knows he's right. It's the reason why he always goes to Chris first, no matter what the problem is. "For a guy who's never had a serious relationship, you are pretty smart about them."

"I read a lot of romance novels," Chris says, deadpan.

"No you fucking don't."

"Don't be snobby, Jess," Chris says, rising to his feet. "And stop for flowers on your way home."

"Right," Jess says grimly.

* * *

The entire apartment smells like chocolate, when Jess gets back, juggling his bulging messenger bag with a bag of food and Lindsay's Get Well card, which was so delicately constructed with glitter and little pop-up things, he was afraid to shove it in his bag. Peanut runs up to him at the door and practically throws himself against Jess' legs, which almost makes him drop all of it right then and there. "Hello, Peanut. Glad to see you've made yourself at home."

"Jess! Let me help." Lindsay rushes over, relieving him of a few of the burdens, shooing Peanut away with her foot. "Oh my God, did you stop at the deli? I told you I was making brownies!"

"Right, dessert," Jess says, "this is dinner."

"Oh my God," Lindsay says again, burying her face in the bag. She's got a fervent, almost obsessive love for Zaidy's sturgeon BLT. "Is this the honeymoon period? Instead of sex we just feed each other until we explode?"

"I'm alright with it," Jess says, dumping the rest of his stuff on the couch and grabbing her waist. Lindsay squeaks, holding the food up the air, out of the way as they kiss. "I'd be alright with the other thing, too. When we get to it."

"Eventually," Lindsay teases, her cheeks flushed. "When I'm not concussed and all."

"We're making our way down the to-do list," Jess replies, kissing the side of her neck softly as he lets her go. He can feel her shiver a little as she pulls away, and she bites her lip against another giddy smile as she pads back into his kitchen. "The card's for you too, in case you were wondering."

"So sweet," Lindsay says, plopping down at the table with the food and the card held possessively in both hands. "And so glittery."

"Whoever keeps buying the glitter paint markers is on thin ice," Jess says, joining her at the table. "As soon as I figure out who it is, anyway."

"It's me," Lindsay says instantly. "I thought the office could use a little glam-up."

"No, it's not. You're a terrible liar."

"Am not," Lindsay lies again, terribly, while unwrapping the food. The deli on the corner, run by an older gay couple who absolutely love to give Jess shit, has a gigantic menu of bagels and bagel sandwiches, all of which contain some sort of fish. Jess has lived in this building for three years, and he still hasn't tried everything - but Lindsay, in her extreme and eager curiosity, has been working her way through it enthusiastically. "Ooh, they gave you some strudel too."

"I told Bagel Joe you were infirmed," Jess says. "He was very upset."

"Wait - his name is Bagel Joe? The tall one or the blonde one?"

"The tall one," Jess says. "And yes, that's his name. They call him that because he makes the bagels, Lindsay."

"Well that makes sense," Lindsay says, hitching one of her legs up across Jess' knees, underneath the table. Stretched out in the chair with a lapful of food, wearing one of his old sweaters, she looks like some kind of domestic wet dream come to life. "So how was your day, honey? Did you publish any books?"

"One or two," Jess says, reaching out to pull her chair a little closer. Lindsay smiles, hitching her other leg up too, so she's halfway into his lap, her bare feet peeking out on the other side of the table. "And what did you do to keep yourself busy? Other than cook and clean and do my laundry, you absolute weirdo - "

"I know you told me I didn't have to, but it was sitting right there and I felt like it was polite!" Lindsay laughs, squirming away from his hand as he reaches out to poke her ribcage. "And I didn't clean that much. Only the kitchen, because I was the one who made the mess with dinner last night."

"I can't handle you sometimes," Jess says fondly, brushing her hair back over her shoulder. "How's your brain feel? Still banged up?"

"Better than yesterday. So like halfway to normal, practically." Lindsay pulls her sandwich apart, picking up one half of the bagel for herself and pushing the other one towards Jess. "Here. We'll split both. I wanna try yours."

"It's just the same thing I always get - the one with the salmon."

"Well, I haven't tried it yet."

"Sure," Jess says with another laugh, happily resigned to letting her do whatever she wants to do. She's fastidious about food, he's discovered - when she cooks she follows the recipe obsessively, and will throw the whole bowl out and start from scratch if she thinks she's made a mistake. A few weeks ago, he spent an entire Saturday on her couch with a Donna Tartt novel, listening to her struggle with a complicated cheesecake recipe in the kitchen. It had an oddly calming effect. "So hey - I know you said only a few days, but I was thinking - did you have plans this weekend?"

Lindsay shrugs. "I need to do something about a car," she says glumly. "It's a twenty minute walk from my place to the nearest bus stop."

"You can ride with me."

"My apartment's like, twenty minutes in the opposite direction," Lindsay protests. She smiles at him. "I mean, maybe every once in awhile, but come on, Jess."

Jess shrugs. He really wouldn't mind - the drive's not that bad, between her place and his. But pressing the issue feels like a mistake. "My uncle knows a guy who could get you a deal," he says. "Used, but I assume that's what you were looking for? He's in Stamford. I bought my truck from him."

"What kind of deal?"

"A deal is a deal, I don't know," Jess says. "He knocked two grand off the price for me, and he didn't charge me any dealer fees. Luke's known the guy for years - they went to high school together, I think."

"Does he have a website?" Lindsay asks, sounding interested.

"Probably. I'll call Luke later and get the guy's name - I don't remember off the top of my head."

"Thanks," Lindsay says warmly. "Stamford - that's what, three hours away? Maybe four with traffic. That's not bad. Were you thinking we could drive up there this weekend?"

"No," Jess says, "I was actually thinking that you could stay here for a few more days, and let me cook for you, for a change."

"What, this doesn't count?" Lindsay asks, holding up her bagel.

"Unless you're dating Bagel Joe - no."

"Well, he's already taken, so I guess I'll stick with you," Lindsay says, shaking her head sadly, a smile lurking at the corner of her mouth. "What are you gonna make me?"

"Well, I have two specialties," Jess explains, "pasta and steak. On occasion, I combine them."

"Hm," Lindsay says, nodding and chewing thoughtfully.

"I have also been known to scramble eggs," Jess continues. "And I can't make an omelet, exactly, but I can put stuff in the eggs, and it ends up being sort of close."

"All that restaurant experience," Lindsay marvels, "truly has made you an expert."

"Well, I never actually cooked at Luke's," Jess says. "There's no way in hell that Luke and Cesar would've let me anywhere near the actual food. I carried food, sometimes. But mostly all he'd let me do was pour coffee and clean."

Lindsay laughs. "Did he actually pay you, or was that just child labor, out in plain sight?"

"A combination of both," Jess says with a laugh. "He did pay me. Just not very much." He's profoundly uninterested in his own sandwich, at the moment, content to sit there and watch Lindsay eat hers, which he hopes isn't the beginning of some sort of kink. But honestly, he likes to watch her do lots of stuff - she's very cute. He's not too worried. "What was the minimum wage in 2001? Five bucks? I think I made five bucks an hour there. Jesus Christ."

"I think that's what I made too, at my first job," Lindsay says. "I worked at a gas station just outside of town for like, two months. I quit after it got robbed."

"What the fuck - were you there?"

"No, it was on a day I wasn't working. My mom still made me quit, though."

"Nobody ever got robbed in Stars Hollow. It's because you crossed the town line," Jess says sagely. "You left the snowglobe - that was your mistake."

Lindsay throws her head back with a laugh. "Snowglobe - I like that. That's exactly what it was."

"Although, I used to shoplift from Doose's all the time," Jess confesses. "I never told anybody but - "

Lindsay tilts her head at his sudden stop. "You can talk about her," she says.

"I was gonna say Luke, actually, but I'm pretty sure he always thought I was joking when I told him," Jess says. "I never would've told Rory that. She would've turned me in."

Lindsay laughs - a little more subdued than before, but just as genuine. "Did you talk to her today? About the book?"

"Yeah. We should publish it." Jess reaches up and touches her injured cheek gently with the backs of his fingers, tracing the edges of where her skin is still a little swollen. "I read it. It's good, and relatable, and funny. It could be a hit, if we marketed it the right way. And frankly - we could use a hit."

She nods, popping the last of her sandwich in her mouth. "Okay."

"Lindsay," Jess says soberly, "look at me."

She does, and her expression goes impossibly soft. "Jess, it really is okay."

"You keep saying that, and I'm not saying I don't believe you, but baby - you're gonna have to work with her," Jess says. "Think about this. You'll be booking her flights, managing her press. Talking to her on the phone, emailing her. For a year, maybe longer, while we work on her book."

Lindsay takes a deep breath, brushing the crumbs from her hands. "I've been thinking about it all day," she says. "And I can do it. I know I can. It's not going to be very fun, but it's not going to be…painful, either. Like it would've been five years ago. You know what I mean?" She grabs his hand, still hovering near her face, and kisses his knuckles. "Does she know about me?"

"No," Jess confesses. "No, I didn't tell her. I wasn't sure if you wanted me to, and also...I didn't really know how to say it."

"Then that's the next step," Lindsay determines. "Because she's the one who wrote the damn thing, right? It's her prerogative as to who gets to publish it. She doesn't have an agent, right?"

"She doesn't really seem to want one," Jess replies, skeptically.

"Then it really is up to her," Lindsay says with a determined little nod. "I can do it, if you like. I'll email her, or something. But she should know that I work for Truncheon, and what my role would be in the process, before she actually signs anything. It's a delicate situation for her too, you know - especially since her book is so personal. She might not want me to be involved at all. And if that's the case, then - well, it solves all our problems, right?"

"We wouldn't let her make a demand like that," Jess says, frowning. "I mean, she could make it, but we wouldn't accommodate it. Unless you didn't want to work on her book, in which case - "

"I'm thirty-three years old, Jess," Lindsay interrupts. "I'm not going to ask my colleagues to rearrange my entire job so I don't have to talk to somebody I don't like."

Jess shakes his head, smiling to himself. "You are, hands down, the most professional person I've ever met. It's actually kind of sexy."

"Thank you," Lindsay replies primly.

Jess takes a deep breath. "I did tell Chris," he says. "About Dean and Rory. I'm really sorry if you didn't want him to know, but...I needed to ask his advice."

Lindsay blinks at him for a moment, clearly taken aback, but then she shakes her head, scoffing. "We should've told him already, probably. Did he tell you to talk to Elijah?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah, we should do that," Lindsay agrees. "On Monday - we'll go in and sit down with him. It could get complicated really quickly, especially with...you and me."

Jess wraps his palm around one of her ankles, still propped up on his lap, and squeezes. He can feel her shiver a little at the contact of his palm against her bare skin. "Yeah, the you and me part," he says carefully, trying not to think of all the ways she could take this the wrong way. "That part's none of Rory's business. I don't think we need to tell her."

"Alright," Lindsay says, just as cautiously. "If you think so."

"It's not because - I don't want you to think I care about what she thinks, or - "

"I know," Lindsay interrupts with a little laugh. "Yeah. I know."

"It's just," Jess says weakly, trying to arrange his feelings into a sentence. It hasn't gotten any easier over the years, despite how much better he's gotten at relationships in general. "It doesn't belong to her. Or any of them, back in Stars Hollow. This, right here - it's yours and mine, and nobody else's. Does that make sense?"

Lindsay's face is impossibly soft. "Yes," she says, leaning in to press a gentle kiss against his cheekbone. "It makes perfect sense, Jess."

"I don't want to keep you a secret," Jess murmurs, squeezing her leg again. "I just don't want her to be part of it, that's all."

"I don't think I want her to know either," Lindsay replies solemnly. "Like, part of what still makes me uncomfortable about her is that...I don't want her to know things about me. What bothered me the most about her and Dean was that he probably...talked to her about me. About the private stuff in our marriage. That stuck with me more than anything else - that he might have told her all these really intimate details that I didn't give her permission to know."

"I won't do that," Jess promises, knowing that he means it. It's a promise he knows he can keep, too. "I won't ever talk to her about you, or tell her anything unless you want me to. No matter what my relationship is to her, or to her mother and Luke - I'll always clear it with you first. I promise."

"Thank you," Lindsay says, sincerely, and with an air of relief. He can see her shoulders slump a little. "God, we really are making this into a big deal, aren't we? I mean, it's not like she's moving in next door or anything - "

"It is a big deal," Jess interrupts gently, reaching over to take her hand. "It is, and you know it."

Lindsay makes a lazy sound of agreement, leaning back against the railing of her chair. She falls into a thoughtful silence, looking absently around his kitchen, chewing on her bottom lip.

"You should tell her that I work for Truncheon," she finally says. "If it comes from me, it'll seem like you deliberately withheld the information from her."

"Which I did," Jess says.

"Right, but we don't have to be mean about it," Lindsay replies. "Next time you talk to her - tell her that I work there. Tell her what I do, and how much I'd be involved with her book. Or I guess you could email her, if that's easier." She shrugs. "If you put it off any longer it'll only look worse."

"Sure." Jess shakes his head. "For the record, I really didn't expect her to want to publish with us, when she first told me about the book."

"Murphy's Law," Lindsay says wryly. "If it can be complicated, it will be."

"Good thing we're trying to head it off at the pass, then," Jess says.

"Yeah," she agrees with a smile, and squeezes his hand. "I think we've got our eyes open."

* * *

Their plan to have a meeting with Elijah is derailed when the guy doesn't show up for work Monday morning, which Jess doesn't even realize until he heads over to talk to him mid-morning. His desk is empty, his computer screen dark, and nobody he asks has heard anything about him calling in sick.

"Oh shit," Chris says, when Jess asks him about it, "I didn't even notice."

"Do you have his number?" Jess prompts. They're not all that strict with people about things like attendance and punctuality, since most of their people are salaried - other than the receptionists, whose hours are tracked through a computer system that's fairly tamper proof and hands off. But a no call no show is a cause for concern, even if it's not something they'd necessarily fire somebody for.

"Somewhere," Chris says, rummaging through his desk. "I'll call him and see what's up."

Elijah doesn't answer his phone, and he doesn't respond to emails, either. By late afternoon, the whole office is gossiping about it - he's a charming guy, mid-twenties, pretty handsome. Everybody likes him. So far, anyway.

"Figures," Lindsay says, over a late lunch in Jess' office. "The first time we really need to talk to him, he plays hooky."

"You don't really think he's gonna ghost us?" Jess asks. "I mean, his resume was crazy good, and he's been like, the most professional person we've hired so far - other than you."

"People can surprise you," Lindsay replies with a shrug. "It might be something explainable - hopefully nothing happened, like an emergency or something. Let's wait and see."

He doesn't show up on Tuesday or Wednesday either, and on Thursday morning they finally get a Dear John email: he's found another job, thank you for the opportunity, feel free to keep anything he'd left at the office. Since the only personal effects he'd left behind are a couple of fancy pens and a bunch of Vitamin Water in the breakroom, nobody is all that impressed.

"It's a curse," Matthew says, at the bar that weekend. "An HR curse. Like the Defense Against the Dark Arts job at Hogwarts."

"Now that you've said that out loud, it really will be a curse," Lindsay chastises. "For one, I'm not all that surprised. He was a little too impressive. You know what I mean?"

"I only heard back from one of his references," Chris confesses. "The other two he gave us didn't return any of my voicemails. I should've been more diligent."

"You're a trusting guy, Christopher! It's what we love about you," Matt replies exuberantly. Chris snorts.

"It's a good job," Jess says, the voice of reason. "Good pay, benefits. And we're not asking for anything unreasonable as far as qualifications. We'll find someone decent."

"I could ask my old boss at MetLife," Lindsay offers. "She's in Connecticut, obviously, but she might know somebody."

"Yeah, sure," Chris says, "or Adrian might - "

The entire table erupts in loud groans, and Matt and Jess both reach out to shove him at the same time, resulting in short scuffle that almost claims Lindsay's martini as a casualty.

"Fine!" Chris exclaims, pushing them both away. His hair is ruffled comically, the collar of his shirt turned inside out. "Fine! It's not like we need an HR person or anything, what with our acquisitions editor dating our office manager. And the love triangle between those goth kids in distribution. And Matt's ex-girlfriend writing us checks every month - "

"It's her dad writing us checks," Matt interrupts. "He likes to support the arts."

"We'll find somebody," Lindsay says reassuringly, grinning at Jess from across the table, rolling her eyes a little when the other two aren't looking. "Don't worry, Chris. It's a good job, like Jess said."

"And we'll be on our best behavior in the meantime," Jess promises.

"Ew," Matt says.

Bad timing, for sure. Rory calls him back the following Monday - late in the afternoon, when Jess is gathering his files together, getting ready to leave. Lindsay's sitting in his desk chair, waiting on him - they're splurging tonight on the good Indian place, across town. For all her protests, catching rides with him has actually worked out fine so far - and it's actually been pretty nice, leaving together every night. Jess is trying not to get ahead of himself about it.

"It's Rory," Jess says, stopping short in the middle of the room. He turns his cell phone so she can see the display, and her eyebrows shoot up.

"Well, answer it."

"Right now?" Jess asks dumbly. Lindsay snorts a laugh at him. "I mean, obviously she's calling right now, but I could let her leave a voicemail and call her back tomorrow - "

"We're not gonna put it off, remember?" Lindsay says with a smile. "Just answer it. Come on - she's gonna hang up."

Jess gives her a look, but Lindsay just shrugs, flapping one of her hands at him. He's still eyeing her as he answers. "Hello?"

"Hey, Dodger," comes Rory's voice, warm and friendly. "Been a minute. Sorry it took me so long to get back to you - this last week has been crazy."

Lindsay has risen from the chair, pointing at the hallway. I'll wait outside, she mouths. Jess snags her hand and motions for her to stay, but she shakes her head, determined. She presses a kiss against his cheek as she leaves. "It's alright. It's been busy here too."

"Publishers have big news weeks too?" Rory asks. Jess is only half listening, watching Lindsay leave. "Because here in Stars Hollow, we had a real shake up, as they say. The teaching staff at the junior high went on strike."

"Good for them," Jess says. "What are they asking for?"

"More water fountains," Rory says, absurdly. "And school uniforms for the students."

"Ah," Jess says, with a snort. "For a second I forgot that you live in an alternate universe."

"Just on the other side of the veil," Rory says, with a comically dreamy lilt to her voice, "there lives a land of flower stands and town festivals."

"Is the veil I-84?"

"You always ruin the magic," Rory says with a laugh. "So. I did what you said."

"The thing I said about taking a few days to think about it, or the thing about letting your mom read it?" Jess asks, leaning against the side of his desk.

"Both. She loved it, by the way. It made her cry like eight times. She kept count."

"Of course she did," Jess says. "What about Luke?"

"He hasn't read it yet."

"Uh huh," Jess says wryly. "Well, don't take it personally. Pretty sure he never made it through my books, either."

"He tries," Rory says earnestly, "he makes it about five pages a night before he falls asleep. I found him once on the couch, using your second novel as a pillow."

"Well, at this rate he'll make it through my second by the time my fourth comes out," Jess says with a laugh. "So what about the other thing?"

"The other thing," Rory says, with that determined bent to her voice, "yeah. That other thing."

"Go ahead, hit me."

"Well," Rory says, suddenly a lot more serious than she'd been before. "I was thinking about it all week, and you know Jess...I think I really want you to be the one who does it. Like regardless of everything else - including where you apparently think I can just waltz into the lobby of Penguin Random House and snatch myself a six-figure deal - "

"Well," Jess interrupts dryly, "I was thinking you could just send an email, but whatever."

" - anyway," Rory says pointedly, "aside from that dream - I think I want you to publish it. You know? It feels right. I trust you, I trust your taste and your instincts, and I know you're a phenomenal writer. And I also know you'll treat the story with respect, which is almost more important to me than the money or the rights or whether it ends up on the bestseller list or not. So - if you're still willing...then I am too," she finishes, her voice lifting up optimistically. "And that's the other thing."

"Yeah, well okay," Jess says. He shakes his head at the ceiling, cursing inside his head. Of fucking course he wasn't going to just get out of it so easily. "I mean - thanks, thank you, first of all. That's quite a compliment."

"You're welcome," Rory says grandly.

"I'll, uh," Jess says, running a hand through his hair and trying to gather his thoughts. "Okay, I'll send you some paperwork to look over. And our legal person - Diana - will get in touch soon. She does the actual contracts - if you have your own lawyer, though, it's a good idea to get them involved as early as possible."

"Right," Rory says succinctly, like she's taking notes. She probably is. "Wow, this is exciting. Contracts and lawyers - it's like we're on The Good Wife."

"Well, it's about to get a lot less exciting," Jess warns her. "Optimistically speaking, we're looking at a release in spring of next year, and that's only if everything goes perfectly."

"I'm not gonna let you ruin the magic for this moment," Rory teases. "I'm about to be a published author, Jess. Come on!"

"Yeah, you are," Jess says, allowing himself to smile. A part of him will always root for her, no matter what else happens between them. They could end up hating each other bitterly and Jess would still wish for her success, in a tiny little teenaged corner of his heart. "It's a good manuscript, Rory. It'll be a good book. It's gonna work."

"Thank you," Rory says warmly. "You're gonna edit it then, right? I'd like your help."

"I - maybe," Jess says. He looks over at the cracked-open door, wondering if Lindsay is just hanging out in the hallway, listening. She's too classy for that, though. She probably wandered over to the break room, or - more likely - back to her desk, to the whirlpool of work that's forever threatening to overwhelm her. Chris has offered - a dozen different times, at least - to hire her an assistant, but she's too stubborn. She hasn't given in yet. "Look, Rory - I need to tell you something, before we make anything official."

"Yeah?" Rory asks curiously. "That sounds ominous."

"It isn't," Jess says. "I mean - it's just sort of a...weird, awkward thing. I don't know." He sounds nervous, he realizes, and curses at himself in his head again. "Look, uh - there's no way to say this without it coming off like I was trying to pull one over on you, so I hope you believe me when I say that was never my intention, but - "

"Now I'm really nervous," Rory interrupts. "Are you pregnant?"

Jess snorts. "No." He laughs again, grateful for her courtesy as always, her skill for putting everyone at ease in conversation, even at her own expense. "No. Rory, Lindsay Lister works for us. She's our office manager and social media director, and she's been working for us for about a year now."

A long silence ensues, which Jess refuses to break, allowing her the space to digest. Then, a delicate clearing of her throat. "Lindsay...Lister of Stars Hollow, Lindsay Lister?"

"Yes."

"Dean's ex-wife, Lindsay Lister," Rory says.

"Yes," Jess says, wincing. "Look, I thought you should know before we move forward. I wasn't hiding it from you - there just wasn't - "

"A good reason to tell me?" Rory says sharply, and then immediately clears her throat again. "Sorry, that came out wrong. I'm not angry, I'm just - wow, Lindsay Lister."

"She didn't know who I was, when she applied for the job," Jess says, feeling weird about it, as if he's defending something that doesn't need defending. But it feels wrong not to explain, too. "We didn't figure it out until after she'd already been working here for a few weeks...we didn't really know each other in Stars Hollow, after all. It took me ages to place where I recognized her from."

"I knew she'd moved somewhere far away, but I didn't know where," Rory says faintly. "Wow. That's...a hell of a coincidence."

"Every big city is just a small town with bad traffic," Jess jokes. "It's true everywhere you go. Trust me."

"I guess," Rory says, still sounding shell-shocked. "Would she...be involved with my book, is that what you're warning me about?"

"Yes. Fairly heavily," Jess tells her bluntly. "Lindsay's in charge of the practical side of pretty much everything, so most of your interaction with her would be later on, when we're setting up events and stuff for you. You know, she books signings, sets up your flights and your hotels, that sort of thing. But she works pretty closely with our marketing director, since she does all the Facebook and Instagram stuff - so it might be sooner than that. It just depends."

"I - okay," Rory says, sounding taken aback. "Back up a second. It's just. Isn't she a nurse?"

"What?" Jess blinks. "No. What?"

"I mean - the rumor around town back then - you know, when she and Dean got divorced - was that she moved to Hartford to go to nursing school."

"Well if that's what she did, she didn't finish," Jess says, thrown for a loop. "Why the hell would we hire a nurse to be our office manager?"

"Well, I don't know!" Rory replies, sounding flustered. "I'm processing, Jess!"

"Okay," he says evenly, rolling his head back on his neck and blinking at the ceiling. "That's fine. She's not a nurse, though."

"Right. Got that, now." Rory makes a little noise, almost like a cross between a scoff and a sigh. "Does she know about me? I mean, about my book?"

"Yes. She was the one who wanted me to tell you, because she knew it might make you...uncomfortable." Jess winces again. "She's...very professional. If that helps. She doesn't want you to feel uh - unwelcome."

"Well, that's - uh, nice," Rory stammers. "Tell her 'thank you,' I guess. I mean."

"Uh huh."

"Yeah," Rory says, with a little incredulous laugh. "Not how I expected this phone call to end. To be honest."

"Sorry," Jess says. "I know it's weird - Lindsay and I weren't sure how to approach it either, at first - you should've seen how awkward it was, the night we realized how we knew each other - "

"Oh my good God," Rory interrupts, "she's the one you're dating, isn't she?"

"Um," Jess says.

"Oh my good gracious God," Rory says, and then hangs up abruptly. Jess rips the phone away from his ear and stares at it in incredulous surprise.

He stands there for a second, half expecting her to call him right back, thinking that she might have dropped the phone, or something. But she doesn't, and when Jess tentatively calls her, it goes straight to voicemail.

Outside, Lindsay is indeed back at her desk, furiously typing a long email. She looks up at Jess' approach and blinks, as if remembering the reason why she'd left his office in the first place.

"Powell's is trying to reschedule Melissa's signing," she says in explanation, "I just got a voicemail from Rick Hanover. How'd it go?"

"Um," Jess says again.

"Oh great," Lindsay says, and clears off a space on her desk for him to sit. Jess tosses his cell phone next to hers on the desk, deciding right then and there to be done with it for the rest of the night, no exceptions. "Did she yell? Freak out?"

"No. Not really," Jess says. "Did you go to nursing school?"

Lindsay blinks again. "No," she says. "Is that rumor still going around?" Jess shrugs. "I didn't really tell anybody that, but there was this one time - this was right after the separation, the divorce wasn't even official yet - Babette cornered me on the square at one of the festivals and she kept going on and on about her cousin's daughter who was a nurse and what good money it was, et cetera, and I guess I must've said something polite, or something that sounded like I thought it was a good idea anyway, and the next thing I know everyone thinks it's my life's greatest ambition." Lindsay sighs, still typing as she talks. "It was a much nicer rumor than what I was expecting people to say about me though, so I guess I didn't fight it too hard."

"Huh," Jess says. "You do sort of have the nurse look. It's because you're so wholesome."

"Shut up," Lindsay says with a snort. She finishes her email and sends it off with a little flourish of her wrist, and then swivels around in her chair. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah." Jess shrugs again. "It went pretty well up until the end. She was definitely taken aback, but she didn't seem to be angry or anything, but then she guessed that we were dating, and then she hung up on me."

"She guessed?"

"April had told her I was seeing someone, and I think she made it seem like we've been together a lot longer than we have," Jess explains. "She does that a lot with Rory. Kind of warns her off in a subtle way. It's kind of sweet. Weird, but sweet."

"Hm," Lindsay says. She glances around at the office, which is mostly empty this late in the afternoon. The receptionists are still there, though, and a couple people lingering in the breakroom, so she's sly about it, when she takes his hand. "I'm sorry. I know you didn't want to tell her."

"It's fine. I was being naive that she wouldn't figure it out, I guess."

"She'll tell her mom, though. And her mom will tell Luke, and then your mom will find out…"

"Yeah, get ready for that," Jess says. "You think my dad's family is quirky? Buckle up, sweetheart."

"I can handle my fair share of quirk," Lindsay says. She bites her lip for a second, looking momentarily unsure. "Come on. Let's get out of here - we can talk more at dinner."

"Fine, but you don't get to order for me this time," Jess says, picking up the big tote bag she uses as a briefcase before she can get to it. "I'm emotionally distressed and I want to choose my own curry."

"But I thought we were gonna do the tasting menu!"

"They never give you enough food, though, and I'm starving."

"Fine," Lindsay capitulates, "but I'm gonna bake something for dessert then, and you don't get any input."

"Deal," Jess replies, satisfied. Her revenge always involves dark chocolate. It's not like it's a burden.

* * *

Two more weeks pass before Jess hears anything else from the alternate universe of Stars Hollow; Rory doesn't even respond to the careful email he sends the next morning, politely asking whether or not she'd like him to put her in touch with Diana. Chris asks him once, a few days later, whether or not to move forward with the manuscript, and Jess tells him it's a "work in progress" and he must come off looking a little stressed out about it, because nobody brings it up to him again.

It's Luke who finally breaks the weird non-silence silence, who calls to invite him to Doula's twelfth birthday party, which Jess has several good excuses lined up for. He always has to come up with backups, because Luke's pretty good at torpedoing his first and second efforts.

"She's your sister, and she's twelve, and she misses you," Luke says bluntly. "Come up for the weekend, Lorelai's offered to comp you a room at the inn. Buy her a video game and hug your mother and you'll earn enough goodwill to get you out of the next year's worth of parties, at least."

"She doesn't miss me, get real," Jess says irritably. "She doesn't even like me."

"That's not true!"

"It is true," Jess says with an incredulous laugh. "TJ tells her all kinds of weird shit about me. The last time I talked to her, she asked me why I was in jail."

Luke snorts. "That could've come from anybody around here, Jess. Not necessarily TJ."

"Oh, thanks a lot."

"Still," he continues, "it's not going to get better if you don't try, Jess. You know that."

Jess isn't really super interested in making his relationship with Doula better, for the same reasons he's not interested in repairing the cracks between himself and his mother, or the passive-aggressive tolerance he has with TJ. He loves them, sure - well, he loves his mom, really, TJ and Doula are sort of accessories that Jess has a much more distant affection for, but anyway - Jess is of the opinion that he can't forgive somebody for something that they've never admitted to doing in the first place. He can manage his relationship with them just fine when he's far away, but when they get up close to each other - that's when the volcano starts erupting again. Best to steer clear whenever possible. "Look, she's twelve, okay? The best thing I can do to stay on her good side is send her awesome presents and not bug her, which is what I'm already doing. When she's a bit older, maybe she'll be interested in getting to know me, but right now she's gonna believe what her parents tell her, which is fine. I'm fine with it."

"Your mom isn't talking shit about you to her seventh-grader, Jess," Luke says irritably. "You always just assume the worst, which is half of why you don't get along - "

"I don't wanna fight, Luke," Jess interrupts. "I'm not mad. It is what it is. But I don't need to hear you tell me what you think Liz does and doesn't do, okay? We've established already that we're never going to agree."

"Fine," Luke grumbles. This is the thing about Luke that always gets to Jess, even after all these years: he's just as critical of Liz as Jess is, and he knows that Luke's on his side, as far as what her parenting approach was like, back in the day. But he can never just come out and say that to Jess - could never just tell him, hey. You're right to be mad. I get it. The loyalty he has to his sister somehow means that he could never just be real about it, and to this day it still hurts Jess' feelings, in a way that's very hard for him to admit, even to himself. "You could still come up to visit. Not for the party, maybe, but it's been almost a year since I've seen you. April's coming to stay for most of the summer while she applies to PhD programs, and I know she'd much rather hang out with you than with me and Lorelai."

Jess tactfully decides not to mention that April's already made plans to come stay with him in Philadelphia for a couple weeks before she goes to Stars Hollow. It feels sort of mean to bring it up, somehow. "Sure, yeah, I can do that. Or you could come down here, you know. You're always welcome."

"Yeah, I got the invitation to your thing. Your book thing. I'm gonna try and make it, but I've got to hire a couple more people first before I can leave the diner for that long," Luke says. "And Rory says your new book is great."

"You don't have to read it," Jess says with a smirk.

"No, I'm gonna read it."

"Honestly, I could just summarize it for you - "

"I'm gonna read it," Luke says stubbornly. "Just gimme some time. That's all I need - I'm a slow reader. I like to appreciate what I read - not like you do, reading an entire novel in like two hours. Do you even finish every page? I know you skim a little, admit it."

"Okay," Jess says, laughing. "Sure, Uncle Luke. Take all the time you need."

"And uh," Luke says, clearing his throat, "you could bring your girl. You know, if you're ready. Rory wanted me to let you know that it won't be a problem."

Jess sighs, letting his forehead fall into his palm. "Oh she did, huh?"

"Yeah. I mean - small world. Are you kidding me?" Luke snorts. "I had a coupla mean-spirited jokes about Dean Forrester saved up, but I figured you wouldn't appreciate them."

"I'm guessing Lorelai is still more than willing to trade mean-spirited jokes about me, Luke," Jess says archly. "It wasn't deliberate. And it's got nothing to do with Dean Forrester."

"Ah, come on, kid, I know that, I was just joking with you - "

"You know what's even funnier, is that I didn't even tell Rory this," Jess continues. "She just guessed, and as usual the gossip is mightier than the sword."

"April confirmed it," Luke says. "You know how it is, Jess. They don't mean anything by it."

"Uh huh." Jess shakes his head, suddenly very tired. Tired of all of it. "No offense, Luke, but you understand why I'm not planning on bringing her home anytime soon, don't you?"

"I mean, sure," Luke says. "It was a long time ago, though."

"Still."

"Rory doesn't seem too upset," Luke says, naively. "She was really nice about it, when she told me to call you."

"She told you to call?"

"Well, not in so many words, but - "

"Jesus, Luke," Jess says, shaking his head incredulously. He hates that it still gets to him like this. Just hates it. "You always say the quiet part out loud. All of you do. You know that?"

"Is that a compliment or an insult? I couldn't tell," Luke says.

"It was both," Jess says. "What do you want to know? What should I tell you that would answer everyone's questions?"

"Come on," Luke says, but Jess waits him out, and after a beat of silence, he hears a resigned sigh. "Is it serious?"

"Yes," Jess says firmly.

"Really?"

"Yes, really," Jess says. "I've known her for a year, we've only been dating for two and a half months but yes, it's serious. She didn't know who I was and I didn't know her when she applied at Truncheon. She's very good at her job, and we're not planning on firing her anytime soon. I'm not her boss and work isn't an issue. She's trying really hard to work through her issues with Rory for my sake, and I'm trying to respect that by not rubbing it in her face. April likes her, and Sasha and Lily think she walks on water. She gets along like a house on fire with Chris and Matt, and so I'm trying really hard not to fuck it up. Anything else?"

"Damn," Luke says, "I don't think I've ever heard you say that many words at one time before. Even when you were yelling at me."

"Shut up," Jess grumbles.

"Well, I can't say I've got a dog in this fight, but I'm happy for ya," Luke says. "Lorelai said she was a real 'Donna Reed type', whatever that means."

Jess snorts. "I mean, she is, but she isn't. She's more like…" Jess thinks about it for a second. "Do you remember that lady who used to sell you those homemade pies? The really good ones. We always sold out by like eleven o'clock."

"Valentina," Luke supplies. "She went back to Miami about five years ago. She was great - always gave me a good deal."

"She probably made more money off of you, since you got everyone hooked on her strawberry rhubarb. You kept her in business," Jess says. "Anyway - she was the sweetest lady ever. Like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. She used to bring me one of those small hand pies every time she made a delivery, and even when I was rude to her, she kept doing it. She'd sit there and talk my ear off like we were best friends, and nothing I said phased her. And she was like that to everybody - remember that time Taylor tried to get her shut down because she didn't have a business license?"

"Oh yeah," Luke says. "Jackson and I stuck up for her. Plus Taylor knew he'd be run out of town if he shut the pie lady down. He was just flapping his mouth like he always does, trying to feel important."

"And she wasn't even mad," Jess marvels. "She still treated him the same way, didn't hold a grudge."

"Yeah, she was a real nice lady," Luke says. "What's your point, Jess?"

"My point is nobody fucked with her," Jess says. "As nice as she was - she didn't mince words, either. One time - you weren't there - she dressed down Kirk at the diner, in the middle of a Saturday lunch rush. She caught him complaining about the service, and she cut him down bad, gave him a guilt trip like you wouldn't believe. Everyone heard it - I'm surprised he didn't burst into tears. He looked like he was about to."

Luke guffaws. "Yeah, I heard about her doing that a few times. She was great."

"That's Lindsay," Jess says definitively. "She's nice, but for her own sake, not anyone else's. And she doesn't take shit from anybody." He hears himself slipping into a tone of voice that he would've been embarrassed by, a few months ago. But he's been coming around to this idea lately, about showing his cards, putting his money where his mouth is. It's a terrifying sort of gamble, but he's getting used to it, bit by bit. "So yeah, sure. Donna Reed works, I guess."

"Hell, Donna Reed wasn't so bad," Luke says. "Alma in From Here to Eternity? And she played a femme fatale in this Alan Ladd movie my dad really liked. She wasn't all aprons and pot roasts."

"Very nuanced thinking, Luke - April would approve."

"You could bring her with you," Luke says. "If you wanted."

"And cause a big thing with Rory? No."

"Rory can deal," Luke says firmly, which strikes Jess so abruptly that he stops breathing for a second. "You're not doing anything wrong, and neither is Lindsay. We'd figure it out. You're family, kid. Come on."

Jess leans his forehead against his fist, blinking hard down at his desk. He has to clear his throat a couple times before he can reply. "That's - thanks, Luke. Thanks for saying that."

"Well." Suddenly bashful, Luke's voice goes gruff. "It's stupid I have to say it."

"Sure, well you know me. Slow on the uptake." Jess laughs to himself, incredulous and feeling a little guilty about being so surprised. "If it's all the same, maybe you better visit here first, before I do a whole 'meet the family' thing. It's still pretty new for us, after all."

"Well, okay - I'll try to make June work then," Luke says. "And I am going to read your book."

"You don't have to like it," Jess says magnanimously. "I'm telling you in advance, it's okay if you think it's pretentious."

"Oh, shut up," Luke says, and Jess can almost hear the eye roll.

* * *

Lindsay picks out a zippy little Nissan Versa at the dealership in Stamford, which surprises Jess since she'd actually been looking at SUVs on the website. But it suits her - much more than the ugly, mud-brown Buick she had before.

"It's blue," Lindsay says happily, "I've never had a nice color car before."

"And everything works," Jess points out. "You can do all the things normal people do in their cars now, Lindsay - charge your phone. Listen to the radio. Not sweat to death in the summer because the air conditioner works properly - "

"And you don't have to turn a crank to open the windows!" Lindsay finishes, clapping her hands in excitement. "Peanut's gonna love it."

"Well, if he likes it," Jess says, kissing her forehead. Lindsay leans into his chest with a sigh, still grinning.

They make a weekend out of it, stopping overnight in New York, at an old friend of Jess' who's been offering his couch for months. Julien, who works some fancy Wall Street job now, is effusively welcoming, cooks them dinner and oohs and ahhs over the Versa like it's the best subcompact sedan he's ever seen. The hospitality is slightly soured, however, when he pulls out a bag of coke right there at the dinner table.

"Um, no thanks," Lindsay says, without even flinching. "I'm on a diet." Jess bites his lip viciously to keep the laugh in.

"It's good for losing weight though," Julien says eagerly, but Lindsay just flashes him her Mona Lisa smile and shakes her head. "Jess, you want a bump? Come on - just like old times."

"No, I'm done with that, man," Jess says, shaking his head. He reaches out and snags Lindsay's hand under the table. "Thanks, though. You go ahead if you want, though."

"Nah, you're responsible adults - so am I then, just for tonight," Julien says, tucking the bag away, but Jess catches him rubbing his nose about an hour later, coming out of the kitchen with a plateful of garlic bread. For the sake of old times, Jess doesn't call him on it.

"Sorry about that," Jess tells Lindsay later, as they wander around the old neighborhood. It looks completely different from what it was when Jess was growing up here, of course - nothing ever stands still in New York. Still, he'd recognize these streetlights and alleyways anywhere. "I didn't know he was still on that shit - I kind of assumed he'd straightened out, what with his job."

"It's fine," Lindsay says. "Amanda used to do a lot of coke. And E, too. When we lived together in Hartford she was always bringing her weird clubbing friends over, so it's not like I'm not used to it."

"I only did it here and there," Jess says. Feeling an odd sort of bravery, he keeps talking. "Mostly I liked pills. Painkillers and shit. But I never let it get out of control - my mom never even found out about it." He pauses in the middle of the sidewalk, and he and Lindsay move to the side to allow an elderly woman with a walker room to get by. She smiles at them both in gratitude, an absurd gesture from the universe, considering the topic of their conversation.

"Somehow," Lindsay says, once the woman is far enough away not to hear, "that doesn't surprise me about you. No offense."

"And it wouldn't surprise me to hear that you've never touched a drug harder than ibuprofen in your life," Jess says. Lindsay smiles and shrugs. "Right?"

"Never really tempted me," Lindsay says. "But, you know - being so close to Amanda - I could understand it. Sort of, anyway. I tried not to get too self-righteous about it, because I knew she had her reasons."

"Everyone has reasons," Jess says, thinking about his mom. "But even the good ones don't make it healthy."

Lindsay steps closer, and threads her arm through his elbow. Her hair, long enough to reach her elbows now, tumbles down between their shoulders, the ends of it snagged against the open collar of his jacket.

"Being back here always fucks with my head," he says after a minute. "Sorry to ruin the mood."

"You're not ruining anything," Lindsay says kindly. "He's an old friend - of course you're worried about him."

"Yeah, well - people do what they do. You can't talk them out of it," Jess says. "My mom wants me to come to Doula's twelfth birthday. Did I tell you? That's why Luke called me the other day."

"Are you gonna go?"

"No." Jess shakes his head. "I'm currently trying to limit the negative influences in my life. That's why I've been spending so much time with you, you see."

Lindsay laughs. "I'm flattered," she says, squeezing his arm, "but don't say 'no' for my sake."

"Oh, I'm not, trust me."

"And don't say 'no' because you're scared, either," Lindsay says. "Say 'no' for good reasons, Jess."

"Hm." Jess thinks about that for a minute. She's always surprising him like that. "I think mine are good. Something something boundaries, something something toxic relationships. You know what I mean."

"I do," Lindsay says, smiling up at him gently. "I'm proud of you, by the way. For saying no to Julien in there. Is that cheesy?"

"Yes," Jess says, his heart in his throat. "But I get it."

"I don't mean it to be condescending either," Lindsay says. "I just mean that I know you were tempted. I could tell."

"I'm always tempted to take the easy way out," Jess says, pulling her to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk. The block is mostly empty, this late at night, but the street is brightly lit by a neon marquee above their heads, which is casting red shadows on her honey-blonde hair. He could write a poem about this moment, probably. "But I don't think I want a way out anymore. Not from where I'm at now. With you, but also with everything else. Does that make sense?"

Lindsay's face does something complicated, her grip loosening on his arm. "Yes, it does."

They hang in silence for a moment, just looking at each other. Jess takes a deep breath and pulls her hand to his mouth for a kiss, thinking about what he'd said to Luke on the phone - about how he always says the quiet part out loud. He hadn't meant it as a compliment, but it wasn't exactly an insult, either. Jess was never brave enough to approach the world like Luke did - brazenly, with his heart on his sleeve, and very little impulse control. It's something he's always admired, in a weird, resentful way.

"D'you wanna see where I went to elementary school?" Jess asks. Lindsay's smile lights up her face as she nods. "P.S. 89. It's only a few blocks from here."

"That would be adorable, yes," Lindsay says. "Your accent's back, by the way. Ever since we got to Julien's. I wasn't going to say anything, but just then when you said 'blocks from here' - "

"Shaddup," Jess says with a laugh, tugging her back down the sidewalk.

"No, I'm saying I think it's sexy!"

"Now you're being condescending," says Jess.

* * *

He doesn't hear from Rory again for a long while. Jess emails her one more time, to make it clear that the door is still open, but she doesn't reply to that either, so he shelves it. The manuscript for Gilmore Girls goes in his TBD folder, Lindsay breathes a sigh of relief that's much more obvious than she thinks it is, and Jess mostly forgets about it for a few months.

His own novel comes out, which is distracting enough; his agent had made friends with Lindsay and they've booked him an ostentatious author tour designed to drive him up the wall, he's pretty sure. He's giving talks at schools and shit. Even a couple TV things. Jess hates every goddamn minute.

"You looked so good on Good Morning Atlanta, though - see, I told you the suit jacket was the way to go," Lindsay tells him. "Don't worry, I emailed the producer and got him to send me a tape of it. That way aaaaall your friends and family can enjoy it, too."

"I'm leaving you for this woman I just met," Jess informs her. "Her name is Daisy and she's much nicer to me than you are."

"Is Daisy the name of that ferret you sent me a picture of this morning?" Lindsay asks patiently. "Your AirBnb host's beloved pet?"

"I don't see what that has to do with her being nice to me," Jess says.

"Just don't get rabies, you've got three more weeks left," Lindsay tells him.

Luke reads it, and likes it (or so he claims, Jess is skeptical). April texts them several pictures of him asleep on the couch with the book laying open in various positions on his face and chest, and each time it seems to be open to a different page, so he's making progress at least. His mom sends him several effusive emails, which is actually kind of nice. And Lily sends him a video of Sasha crying her eyes out when she first sees the dedication page. Jimmy's in the background crying too, although he denies it when Jess tries to tease him about it.

"Honey, I don't even know what to say," Sasha tells him, over a weak Skype connection, as Jess is sitting in a hotel room in Austin, Texas. "You didn't have to do this. Wait - did you dedicate it to me just because I might die? Because fuck you, if so."

"No," Jess says, laughing. "I dedicated it to you because you're one of my favorite people, you ungrateful hippie."

"Aw," Sasha says. She's been in the hospital for a few days, on her second round of chemo, but she looks good on the video - her eyes are bright and alert, there's color in her face. Lily's been sending him daily updates, so Jess knows everyone's spirits are good, that the doctors are hopeful. "Still, you didn't have to. I hope it won't cause any problems with your mom."

Sasha's always been gentle and careful about Liz, to the point where it used to annoy Jess a little when he was living with her. He'd wanted to be angry, to be allowed to stew and sulk about it, but Sasha was always defending Liz, which was the only thing about her that used to piss him off. "It won't. I mean - she hasn't said anything, and I'm sure she's read it by now. So that means she's probably just gonna ignore it."

"She probably knows by now," Sasha agrees. "About me having cancer, I mean. So maybe she's trying to be courteous."

"Yeah, maybe," Jess says, noncommittally. "But I don't care. What she thinks, I mean. I did this because I wanted to, and it's not my problem how she feels about it. You deserve every word, Sash. You and Lily both - I wouldn't be half the writer I am if it hadn't been for you."

He can see her tearing up again, and trying to hide it - ducking her head away from the camera, letting her scarf fall into her face. Jess lets her have the moment. "All we did was encourage you - we didn't give you your talent. Or your dedication, honey - that was all you."

"No," Jess says, shaking his head. "There are people who come into your life who kick you in the right direction. And you gave me the right kick - that's what I mean. All of you did." He waits for a moment, while she gathers herself, grinning at the screen as she lets out a watery laugh, wiping tears off her cheekbones. "Besides, I'm not planning on stopping anytime soon. I'll have plenty of books to dedicate to everyone else by the time I'm done."

"That's the spirit," Sasha says, still wobbly with tears. "I love you, babe. You're one of my favorite people, too."

"Ah, yeah," Jess says, swallowing thickly. "Thanks. I mean - I love you too. That's what I probably should've said first, instead of the 'kick' thing."

"Oh, I knew what you meant," Sasha says, laughing.

He almost loses the email, when it finally comes - everything gets jumbled up when he's traveling, constantly in a state of messy transit - including his thoughts, emotions, and email inbox. In an Uber to the University of Michigan campus, where he's meant to have "a conversation" with a creative writing professor for the benefit of forty-odd Humanities undergrads, Jess finds Rory's email, a few days old, with a link to a podcast he was featured on attached.

I find it funny how you claim not to be a post-postmodernist and yet still here you are on a trendy podcast, discussing post-ironic nihilism with David Naimon.

Jess laughs out loud, and sends back, when did I claim not to be a post-postmodernist? As if anyone's come up with a good definition of what that is, anyway.

I could've sworn you said it once. And post-postmodernism is anything written after the invention of iPods, duh.

"Touche," Jess says out loud, drawing the wary attention of the driver. With a strange sense of relief, though, releasing a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding, he finds that he doesn't really care.

First of all, I want to apologize, says the email Rory sends later that night - a long one, with a few long rambling paragraphs that Jess reads several times just to understand. She sounds like she might've been a little tipsy when she wrote it, which Jess can understand. It was unprofessional to just ghost you like I did, but then again that's sort of my thing, isn't it? Being kind of unprofessional - not ghosting. I don't usually ghost people, but especially you - one of my oldest and dearest friends, which I mean in a sincere way, not a passive-aggressive, Victorian way.

"Okay," Jess says with a snort, reading that line twice. She can be so charmingly pretentious sometimes, it still drives him crazy, how much he likes it.

I've done a lot of thinking over the past few months - helped along by your novel, which of course was brilliant and sad and surprisingly romantic, good job! As usual! - and the conclusion I came to was sort of ugly, but I feel like I owe it to you, to confess. I was upset and jealous about Lindsay, which you probably already figured out - and no, not because of Dean, or because of the history there. I was jealous because in the back of my mind, I had held you in a specific moment, and even after all these years, all the times that I've seen you in person and witnessed how you've changed and grown - really, in my heart, you were still nineteen, walking up to me on the street in Stars Hollow. I think you know what I'm talking about, and I hope you won't make me say it - I'm not thatbrave, unfortunately.

That's not to say that I'm asking you to drop everything in your life and elope with me (we'd kill each other in a week! Or maybe we'd make it two. We're both in therapy now, after all) or even telling you that I'm still in love with you, which I'm not (sorry), because I think we both know what we have now is much kinder, gentler, and infinitely more beautiful than what we were trying to build together back then. I do love you, because of course I do - but friendship is, I've come to believe, a much richer and more precious thing than romance (at least the version of it that I've always found myself attracted to). I trust you, and I know you trust me, and while our lives might be very separate now, I think you know that I would drop it all if you ever needed anything from me. In a 'ride or die, I'm the only living soul who knows the swan story' sort of way.

Anyway. What I'm trying to tell you is that a) I'm sorry, and b) what I want more than anything else for you, more than success or money or Booker Prizes, is happiness. And if what you have now, with Lindsay or with anyone else, brings you that, then of course I approve. Of course I'm not angry. OF COURSE YOU CAN BRING HER HOME, YOU IDIOT. We're adults and also, sort of stepsiblings? Whatever. I love you, is the point.

And you're still the only one I want to publish the book. If you're still willing to, that is - warts and all. It wouldn't have a home with anyone else, Jess. You're the only person in the whole world that I would ever trust with it, and that's the truth.

Jess almost doesn't see the postscript, several lines of space down, at the bottom, as overwhelmed as he is by those paragraphs: P.S. please give Lindsay my number. Tell her when she's ready that she can call or text me, whatever she's comfortable with. It's time to grow up.

Attached to this message is a picture of her daughter - Nori, as she's affectionately named - holding the galley of his novel that Jess had sent to Rory. She's cute, obviously, but what touches Jess more than anything else is that Rory had sent the picture at all - she's never done that before, sent him photos of her baby. It feels like a gesture, somehow - a realignment. She's always been sort of tactful about talking about herself - her relationships and her emotions, her daughter and her mother - perhaps for obvious reasons. But now, here's this picture of Lorelai the third, sitting up in her bouncy chair, holding his book. You see? she's saying. Welcome to my life. Let's get to know each other again. It should be fun.

Jess takes a deep breath, and calls Lindsay. He can't think of anything else that he could possibly want to do, in the face of an email like this.

"I'm forwarding you an email and you have to promise me you'll read it," Jess says, before she even says hello. "Shit, did I wake you up?"

"No, I just got back from the bar," Lindsay says. She sounds a little drunk, but not overly so. "Chris and Matt say hi. What email?"

"From Rory," Jess says, already sending it. "Please read it."

"Okay," Lindsay says cautiously. "Like right now?"

"No. Just - when you want to. Like when you're ready. It's intense."

"Okay," Lindsay says again. He can hear her shuffling around and pictures her in her apartment, shrugging out of her jacket, tossing her purse and keys on the table. She's got the funniest way of moving around her apartment - she never does it at work, it's like all her energy gets toned down, stuffed into a jacket when she's at the office - but at home she stomps around, flailing her arms, knocking her shins and knees against every surface. When she cooks she's like a tornado - splattering chocolate and flour everywhere, tossing spoons aside the second they get dirty. Walking around her living room on Sunday afternoons, she moves like a linebacker - shoving furniture out of the way with her foot, knocking things off of tables. It's like she's so impatient to get from point A to point B that she can't even contain herself. "Are you okay? You sound a little upset."

"I'm fine, I think," Jess says. "Mostly I just wanted to talk to you. Because I feel sort of weird, having read this, and not having you read it too. So like - I'm not sending it to you to reassure you, or so that you won't get jealous, or anything like that. I just need you to read it because it's...intense for me. Does that make sense?"

"Sure," Lindsay says. He hears Peanut bark once or twice in the background, and Lindsay pulls the phone away from her mouth momentarily to shush him. "Sorry. Yeah, I get it. I'll read it in the morning, though - I'm not sure I can concentrate on it right now."

"Of course."

"How was the UMich thing?" she asks. "Not to change the subject or anything, if you need to keep talking about Rory. I mean - sorry, I'm having trouble focusing right now. There were a lot of martinis happening."

"It's okay," Jess says with a laugh. "We can talk about it later. UMich was fine. The guy was sort of a douche, but I'd heard that about him, so I was prepared. I met a lot of the students, they did a sort of coffee-and-snacks reception thing afterward."

"That's cool. Were they undergrads, or was it mostly people from the creative writing program there?"

"A mixture of both," Jess replies, thinking of one girl who had stood out - big round glasses with bright red frames, dreadlocks wrapped up in a round bun on top of her head. She'd cornered Jess by the coffee pot and asked him blunt questions about publishing - how long it took, if a pen name that sounded whiter would improve her chances, which agents did he think she had a shot with. He asked her for her email at the end, and she'd blinked at him in blank surprise for a full second before she grinned and produced a business card from her purse. "You know, sometimes I regret not going to college. I think I would've been good at it."

"Of course you would've been good at it," Lindsay says with a scoff. "You're like, crazy freaking smart. Sometimes when you talk about literature it makes me kind of nervous, because I don't really know how to keep up with you."

"Oh, come on."

"It's true! I actually wasn't planning on ever telling you that, but I'm kind of drunk," Lindsay says. "I'm not saying it makes me feel bad or anything, but you know. It just stands out to me sometimes, how sharp you are. That's all."

"You're just as smart as I am, just about different things," Jess says. "It's an interest that I've spent most of my life working on, and I picked up a lot of lingo along the way. Half of sounding smart is knowing the right words, you know - it's not like I'm saying anything particularly original or groundbreaking, most of the time."

"Well, I think you're wrong about that, but whatever," Lindsay says. "You could still do it, you know. Go to college. There are writing programs you could get into, I bet. With the literary clout under your belt, I bet you could get into an MFA without an undergrad degree, even."

Jess shudders. "No thanks."

"You're the one who brought it up!"

"I just meant - I would've been good at it," Jess says. "When I was a twenty-year-old douchebag. I would've killed it, probably. I thought I knew everything."

"Every twenty-year-old thinks they know everything."

"Right, but it's when you combine that arrogance with an extensive knowledge of Beat literature that a guy starts to get dangerous," Jess says. "I would've been insufferable. Made all sorts of enemies."

Lindsay laughs. "I can picture you somewhere like - Columbia or NYU. Smoking cloves in Central Park."

"Please," Jess says. "I smoked real cigarettes, Lindsay. Like a man."

"Oh, my mistake," Lindsay replies, still giggling. "Or maybe you could've gone to UCLA. Wearing your leather jacket to the beach every day."

"You're making fun of me, but I actually did that when I lived there, my dad used to give me so much shit," Jess says. "T.C. Boyle teaches at USC. I've always wanted to meet him."

"Give him a call! You're a contemporary, now."

"Yeah right," Jess says with a laugh. "I'm not that good."

"Yes you are," Lindsay replies, suddenly earnest. "You are, baby. Believe it for once, why don't you? You're on the bestseller list, for God's sake. And all these prestigious events we got for you - half of them called us, you know."

Jess rubs his jaw, the email from Rory still open on his laptop. The text blurs a little, in the contrast between the bright white screen and the almost-dark dimness of his hotel room. "I believe I'm good, I just don't think I'm as good as you say I am, because you're influenced by how handsome and sexy I am. Admit it."

"I'm very biased, and you are very, very good," Lindsay says. "I cried when I read the book. You saw me."

"You cry at commercials, sweetheart."

"Only when I'm on PMS! And I cried at the end of your book because it's brilliant, stop arguing with me," Lindsay continues stridently, rising her voice over the sound of his laughter. "I hate that you're so far away. If you were here right now I'd sit on you until you believed me."

"You can sit on me when I get home," Jess says, with just enough innuendo that she makes a weird noise, somewhere between a laugh and a squeak. "I'll be looking forward to that."

"Shut up," she says, sounding sort of embarrassed, which makes him laugh again - she's just so cute all the time, he can't stand it. He doesn't know how anybody else can make it through a single conversation with her without losing it like he does on a regular basis. "I do miss you. Next time I set up a tour for you it's gonna be way shorter."

"Next time you can come with me," Jess says, feeling brave. He closes his eyes and pictures her face, thinks about the next few months of his life, laid out so clearly in front of him: the big reading in Philly, the one Luke will be at. April on his couch for a couple weeks in late June. Lindsay's parents visiting in August, an event that she's already started to stress out about. Rory's book. Sasha in remission - a desperate, fervent hope, but one that he feels optimistic about. Stars Hollow, maybe. The future is a bright, undeniable thing, an open window that for the first time in his life, he isn't scared of. "Can I tell you something? You don't have to say anything back."

"Uh oh," Lindsay jokes.

"It's not bad. Unless I've really been reading this wrong."

"If you're gonna ask me to have phone sex the answer's no, I'm wearing these really uncomfortable jeans and my feet hurt from my heels, I've never felt less sexy," Lindsay says.

Jess snorts. "No. I wanted to tell you that I love you, that's all."

Lindsay takes one surprised breath, and then lets it out slowly. "Oh my God, I love you too."

She sounds so surprised by it, he has to laugh. "You really didn't have to say it back. I know you're drunk, it's okay - "

"No, I love you. I love you," she says, kind of marveling at it, like she's testing it out. "I do. Wow, that's so cool."

He laughs again. "Go to sleep, wasted face. I'll call you in the morning."

"Okay," Lindsay agrees sleepily. "Say it again, though."

"I love you," Jess says, feeling every syllable in his joints, like the words are rattling down to his bones and making them vibrate.

"Very cool," Lindsay says. And Jess is still smiling, long after he hangs up.

* * *

"So, I get the next book, right?" April asks.

"Dream on," Jess says. Peanut twitches a little in his sleep, curled up happily in her lap. There's an episode of This American Life playing on her phone, but neither of them are really listening to it. "Do something amazing for me, and then I'll dedicate a book to you."

"I've done plenty of amazing things for you," April says, rubbing Peanut's forehead. "You just don't appreciate them."

"Name one."

"I bring light into your life," April says, "I run interference for you with the Gilmore Girls, I defend you when Luke says you don't call enough - "

"Okay, but I don't call enough."

"And I ate this brownie so you didn't have to," April says. "Thanks again, Lindsay! I'm still floating, oh my God. Dark chocolate cloud nine."

"You're welcome!" Lindsay calls from the kitchen. Jess had made her promise to leave the dishes for them to do, but she keeps sneaking back in to keep loading the dishwasher. He's about given up on trying. "Any time!"

"I love her," April says solemnly. "Is she moving in?"

"Maybe. We've been talking about it." Jess has never been this excited about commitment, ever. It's a new and surprising state of being, on all fronts. "Her lease isn't up for another five months, so we have a good chunk of time to think about it."

"What's to think about? She's amazing," April says. "She's gonna help me write my statement of purpose tomorrow."

"I thought you already finished it."

"I did, but only for NYU," April says. "The joint JD in law at Boston College needs to be a little different, and Lindsay's the closest person to an expert I know, so."

"I keep forgetting she was gonna be a lawyer once upon a time," Jess muses. "It freaks me out a little."

"But in a sexy way, right?"

"Don't say 'sexy,' you're too young," Jess says. April snorts. "You know why she changed her major? Because she didn't think she wanted to work in an office." April laughs out loud. "I know, right? She wanted to start her own business. Something 'outdoorsy,' she told me."

"Which is why she ended up working for an insurance company for eight years, I'm guessing?"

"Pretty much. Although I still think she could pull it off, if she wanted to. Don't tell her I said that, though - we need her too much."

"Are you guys making fun of me?" Lindsay calls from the kitchen, over the telltale sounds of running water. "I heard my name!"

"Yes," Jess yells back. April grins and switches to scratching Peanut's stomach, who immediately starts thumping his tail in doggy bliss. "Come sit down with us, we're bored!"

"As soon as I finish not doing the dishes, I will!"

"Ugh, she's the worst," Jess says, grinning. April just keeps snickering, leaning heavily against the couch, with Peanut falling to pieces in her lap. "You're coming with us to the thing, right?"

"If I'm not 'too young,'" April says, with the air quotes and everything.

"Did I say that? Nah. You're what - thirty? Thirty-five now?"

"I'm twenty-five!"

"Whatever, you're so old," Jess says, reaching out to kick her foot. She yanks it back, making a face at him. "You can come to the stupid bar with us. Just don't go home with anybody - I'm serious about that one."

"Ugh. Dating," April says with a shudder. "No thanks. I'm too smart for that, thank you very much." Jess surprises himself, with how loud he laughs. "Besides, I'm too busy. If I'm going to be a professor then I have to buckle down - really dedicate myself, you know? Then who knows where I'll end up - I'll have to move where the job is. It could be anywhere - I can't guarantee that there will even be a position open at any of the schools on the East Coast."

"If you end up in some podunk town in the middle of Wyoming or something, then you'll never find a husband, you know," Jess says.

"Like I want a husband. Don't be heteronormative, Jess."

"Or a wife. Whatever." Jess shrugs. "Hell, don't marry anybody - find a soulmate and just live with them forever. Like Willa Cather and Edith Lewis."

"Well, they didn't get married because it was illegal back then, Jess."

"I could see you with like, a sophisticated companion," Jess says, blithely ignoring her interjection. "An artist, maybe a painter. Or a slam poet - somebody who would lighten you up a little, get you out and about. Walking hand in hand through the Village, going to the opera, or whatever."

"Am I living in 1935, in this fantasy?" April asks with a laugh. "Besides, I hate slam poetry."

"Why? What'd they ever do to you?"

"Nothing, it's just so pretentious!"

"What's so pretentious?" Lindsay asks, breezing into the room. The front of her shirt is wet from dishwater, and Jess frowns at her as she flops down into his lap, shoving his feet off the coffee table so she can get comfortable.

"Slam poetry," April says.

"What is this, what are you doing to me," Jess complains, realizing that her hands are still wet too. "Ugh, you're killing me, doing my dishes, tracking water everywhere, what's wrong with you - "

"Sorry, am I bothering you?" Lindsay says, wiping her hands dry on his shirt. Jess shoots her a look of disgust that only serves to make her laugh. "You need to wash your dish towels, by the way. I got brownie batter on all of them. Sorry."

"Unbelievable," Jess says, yanking her legs up higher on his lap so he can put his feet back up. She squeaks, sliding down a little until he steadies her with one arm around her back. "April, I see you. I see what you're doing, and don't even think about it - "

"Too late," April says, snapping a photo. "Instagram story."

"Goddamn it," Jess says.

"You guys are disgusting," April says cheerfully. "Absolutely detestable."

"Did you just actually just use the word 'detestable' in real life? You're such a philosophy major," Jess complains.

"Hey," Lindsay says, "I was a philosophy major for a while, you know."

"What, for like a week?"

"It was a month, thank you very much."

"Double El, if there's a single thing in academia that you didn't try to major in at one point, I'd like to know what it is," Jess says.

Lindsay thinks about it for a moment. "Sports medicine."

April cackles. "She's got you there," she says.

Lindsay beams at them both. "Tomorrow will be fun," she chirps. "April's never met Matt, has she?"

"No, and that was a deliberate choice we were making as a family," Jess says pointedly.

"I've talked to him on the phone. He can't be as bad as you say he is, I think you're just trying to scare me off so I won't tell embarrassing stories about you."

"You don't know embarrassing stories about me."

"I know the swan story," April says wickedly, and Jess almost dumps Lindsay right onto the floor. He quashes his fight-or-flight instinct at the very last second, though. "Yup. Rory got really drunk at the Spring Flower Festival and told me. Don't worry, though - Luke and Lorelai were all the way across town. I'm positive nobody heard."

"How positive?" Jess demands.

"Fairly positive. Almost certainly positive?"

"What's the swan story?" Lindsay asks, sounding intrigued.

"No. No fucking way," Jess says. April just grins at him. "April, I will kill you. I will push you right off the balcony right now."

"Lindsay," April says slowly, rubbing Peanut's head slowly. She looks like Dr. Evil, swiveling in the leather chair with the hairless cat. "We should talk later. One one one. You know - girl stuff."

"Lindsay, you're forbidden from talking to April," Jess says immediately. "For the rest of our lives."

"Oh we totally should," Lindsay says, as if he hadn't even spoken. "Really get to know each other. It's past time we had a really intimate talk."

"I hate," Jess says, and thinks for a second about how to end that sentence. There's just so much about this conversation that he hates. "...swans. I really hate them. I hate them so much, you guys."

April is almost in spasms, laughing, but Lindsay just leans in and tenderly kisses his cheek. "I cannot wait to hear this story."

"You're the worst," Jess lies, pulling her in close.

"Yeah, I'm detestable," Lindsay agrees.


End file.
